Google and evil

Last week, another distasteful use of your personal information by Google came to light:

The company plans to attach your name and likeness to advertisements delivered across its products without your permission.

Reported today in The Atlantic, “As happens every time the search giant does something unseemly, Google’s plan to turn its users into unwitting

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endorsers has inspired a new round of jabs at Google’s famous slogan “Don’t be evil.” While Google has deemphasized the motto over time, it remains prominent in the company’s corporate code of conduct, and, as a cornerstone of its 2004 Founder’s IPO Letter, the motto has become an inescapable component of the company’s legacy.

“Famous though the slogan might be, its meaning has never been clear. In the 2004 IPO letter, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin clarify that Google will be “a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.” But what counts as “good things,” and who constitutes “the world?” The slogan’s significance has likely changed over time, but today it seems clear that we’re misunderstanding what “evil” means to the company. For today’s Google, evil isn’t tied to malevolence or moral corruption, the customary senses of the term. Rather, it’s better to understand Google’s sense of evil as the disruption of its brand of (computational) progress.

“Of course, Google doesn’t say so in as many words; the company never defines “evil” directly. But when its executives talk about evil, they leave us clues. In a 2003 Wired profile of the company, Josh McHugh noted that while other large companies maintain lengthy corporate codes of conduct, Google’s entire policy was summarized by just those three words, “Don’t be evil.” While there’s some disagreement about its origins, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit reportedly conceived of the slogan, calling it “kind of funny” and “a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.” Continue reading “Google and evil”

U.K. national block of online porn

In a remarkable move made public today, every household in the UK is to have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron is to announce.

As discussed in a article appearing in The Guardian, “in addition, the prime minister will say possessing online pornography depicting rape will be illegal.

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“In a speech, Mr Cameron is expected to warn that access to online pornography is “corroding childhood”.

“Search engines will be given until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content.

“In addition, experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) will be given enhanced powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks, and a secure database of banned child porn images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it.”

 

More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076