I would suggest to any of you guys who believe the slogan of a publicly traded company actually dictates the way it does business to reconsider. Companies traded on the stock exchange are beholden to shareholders and they exist only to amass profit. I'm not trying to spout some kind of poli-economic philosophy, that's just the legal responsibilities of a company.

I think understanding GOOG from that perspective is also helpful with SEO.

This is drawing away from the intent of the thread, but it is somewhat related so it should be okay.

Wyweb, by 'unsavory' I meant unpleasant, maybe even a little bit sleazy.

The charge of "Do no evil" is very specific. Your definition of evil may vary, but this missive would define the intent behind every specific task and project a company gets involved with. "Don't be evil" speaks to a more all-encompassing corporate philosophy, a long term goal.

Wyweb, you're right in saying that the two are very close in meaning, which begs the question...why change it? The only reason I can come up with is that at some top level internal discussion, someone started asking if some of the things Google is involved with can be classified as "doing no evil".

-Sampling private wi-fi data?
-Changing search algorithms to further the company’s self interest rather than the user’s?
-Changing AdWords backgrounds to make them more ambiguously an ad?

These may not be “evil”, but they’re borderline “unsavory”. My feeling is that Google understands that these are necessary to their long-term mission. Sometimes to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

I have no problem with Google changing their motto. In fact, I think it takes a pretty self-aware company to realize that this kind of change is needed. Maybe Larry Page is feeling that they’ve gotten away from that core philosophy and his return will bring Google back to its roots.

@arieng

-Sampling private wi-fi data?
-Changing search algorithms to further the company’s self interest rather than the user’s?
-Changing AdWords backgrounds to make them more ambiguously an ad?

These may not be “evil”, but they’re borderline “unsavory”. My feeling is that Google understands that these are necessary to their long-term mission. Sometimes to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

Okay, now we're on target. Your original post wasn't clear enough for me.

Well said...

Interesting commentary from an ex-Googler: [slacy.com...]

Thanks g1smd for this important link ~ I urge everyone to read the Slacy blog article. Here's a few quotes to whet your appetite:

"I saw the company go from a place where engineers were seen as violent disruptors and innovators, to a place where doing things 'The Google Way' was king, and where thinking outside the box was discouraged and even chastised."
...
"Engineers at Google spend way too much time fussing about with everything other than engineering and product design."
...
"Google has a very, very strong NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. Alternate solutions ... are all seen as technically inferior and poorly engineered systems. Google needs to get off it's high horse, and look at what's happening outside of it's organization."
...
"One of the things I heard over and over was 'If your product isn't a billion-dollar idea, then it's not worth Google's time.'"

We rarely get to see an insider's critique, and to my way of thinking, Slacy's observations go a long way to explaining the reason so many of us have been complaining about Google these past few years.

..................

It looks like Larry has his work cut out for him, great insights thanks for the link.

Oy! Even if some of these critiques are valid, I'd hate to have my company's dirty laundry out in the open like this for all my competitors to see.

I'm surprised there isn't a non-disclosure agreement for employees barring exactly this type of sharing.

"I'm surprised there isn't a non-disclosure agreement for employees barring exactly this type of sharing. "

What secrets is she sharing? Not one, just shows that Google is different from the crap we see in the news

The information comes from an ex-Googler, out of the system for a year or two.

As an aside, both of the URLs I posted in this thread were random items that I noticed on Twitter.

Page’s mandate now is to renew Google’s energy and drive

Fat chance. Once a company becomes publicly traded, every move is about quick gains to please the stockholders.

Interesting article published today by a former Google engineer - he looks at his own experience during Larry Page's first time as CEO for indicators of what to expect in Larry's second run with the job.

The Once and Future King [xooglers.blogspot.com]

Interesting - Google's Adam Lasnik tweets that he agrees with the viewpoints in the article I linked to.

[twitter.com...]

I don't find the ex-googler's revelations very damning at all as anyone that has ever worked in a large corporation like Lotus, IBM or Microsoft will have a similar list of complaints. After reading it I really felt like I almost read a memo I'd written over 20 years ago! LOL

The problem I saw at Lotus, which Google is much worse at, is the more PhDs you pile on a project/company the more NIH you get and that's when in house productivity can crater when everyone is forced to eat their own dog food. The PhDs are always quick to poo-poo other tools and languages, it has to meet their highly educated committee driven approval or it's shunned, even though you could accomplish the task in a fraction of the time.

Worse yet, the PhDs turn everything into a computer science project and something quick and dirty that could be done and functional in production in 30 days or less is still languishing in engineering 6 months later is has bloated to 6x it's original size and 10x slower.

Our team solved the problem easily by ignoring the PhDs, or human speed bumps as we called them, and not telling them what we were doing until it was already done.

Here's a quick scenario that probably wouldn't play at Google at all, they would probably simply not be allowed to get the tools I used. Had a Lotus VP drop in and ask me why my team was still spending money buying MS Excel, Word, etc. when they had AmiPro, Lotus 1-2-3 Windows, etc. back in the day. I looked him straight in the face and told him it's because your products don't work and we can't get our jobs done when engineers lose a weeks worth of work when a document gets corrupt from software not built for industrial strength usage. We filed all the bug reports, handed over all the test files, nobody sent us patches to solve our issues. One crash I can survive, two gets annoying, third time MS got our money. He looked stunned and walked away, I never heard about it again and MS was getting Lotus money for competing products.

That stuff never changes, 20+ years later it's still business as usual, ex-googler is posting history repeating itself, especially the week of meetings, ugh.

Glad I ran screaming away from that crap a long time ago.

Watch Pages' last public address:

[digitaldaily.allthingsd.com...]