Valleywag
larry and sergey
Posts Tagged “
Don't Be Evil
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larry and sergey
don't be evil
Eric Schmidt denies existence of Google "evil meter"
Google CEO Eric Schmidt shared his deep thoughts in a conversation with the New Yorker's Ken Auletta, and News.com's Dan Farber was there to transcribe the sermon. Shareholders might be a little surprised by statements like "Our goal is to change the world. Monetization is a technology to pay for it." But the real nut is how Google executives have been slowly backing away from the company's "Don't be evil" pledge. More »
don't be evil
Italians mistake Google Street View car for prowling Gestapo
A former neo-Facist, Gianni Alemanno, is the new mayor of Rome. He got the job promising to bulldoze homeless encampments, deport foreign criminals and install surveillance cameras, all in an effort to be tough of crime. So it isn't surprising to read reports that when Google's black Street View car, with its 360-degree camera mounted on top, came rolling down Viale Trastevere in Rome, citizens on the street immediately fled as though it were a horde of brick-wielding blackshirts chanting Me ne frego!
don't be evil
Scientology critics say Google banned them to win Scientology's advertising business
Google's video-sharing site YouTube began hosting a channel for The Church of Scientology last month. It's a "sponsored" channel, so Scientology pays for the privilege as well as for the Scientology ads YouTube also began serving in April. Now a group of Scientology critics have accused Google of banning users critical of Scientology in order to win the Church's advertising business. More »
great moments in pr
Sergey Brin schools us on how to take a stand, boldly do nothing
CEOs and founders feeling hounded by pesky profit-hating humanitarians could learn a lesson or two from Google cofounder Sergey Brin. At Google's annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Amnesty International presented two shareholder proposals on behalf of the New York State Pension Funds involving Google's difficulties with China, privacy and censorship. Brin handled the PR mess, no problem. More »
online advertising
Google helps Scientology get out its message of total freedom and truth
The dollar's sinking value wasn't the only reason Google crushed Wall Street's expectations for the company's first quarter. The Church of Scientology helped, in its own small way. The church paid for advertising space on YouTube to convey its message that "you are an immortal spiritual being. Your capabilities are unlimited." That is, if you can stomach the olive oil shots and spare a little cash. We're surprised Google's human filters didn't catch the ad. We've heard they're plenty familiar with the way an organization can use crafty words to create false expectations in order to lure warm bodies.
google
Marissa Mayer wishes she could be more evil
Is it jet lag that causes executives' lips to loosen overseas? Surely Google VP Marissa Mayer must understand that words uttered in Australia will reach California much faster than a Qantas flight. Her indiscretion down under: Backing away from Google's informal motto, "don't be evil," in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. "It really wasn't like an elected, ordained motto," Mayer told the newspaper. "I think that 'Don't Be Evil' is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don't like." Mayer then gave this dodge when asked if Google should be held to a higher standard than its competitors: More »
don't be evil
A recently departed DoubleClicker tells us that Google managers asked employees at the online ad company it acquired last month to sign one-year noncompete agreements. Most agreed, thinking that it would spare their jobs — but then layoffs came a week later. They were "pretty pissed" over the bait-and-switch and were forced to find jobs outside their industry. The text of the noncompete is below.
More »
Did you sign Google's noncompete? Good, you're fired
A recently departed DoubleClicker tells us that Google managers asked employees at the online ad company it acquired last month to sign one-year noncompete agreements. Most agreed, thinking that it would spare their jobs — but then layoffs came a week later. They were "pretty pissed" over the bait-and-switch and were forced to find jobs outside their industry. The text of the noncompete is below.
More »
don't be evil
Google takes down App Engine sample -- maybe because it was blatant ripoff
To demonstrate its new Amazon S3-killer App Engine, Google built a sample application for the domain HuddleChat.com. The problem: "HuddleChat is just a feature-for-feature clone of 37signals's Campfire," writes Daring Fireball's John Gruber.The layout is the same, the tabs at the top of the screen are the same, the right-side sidebar listing participants and file uploads is the same. It even copies Campfire's trick of formatting a message as "code" if it contains literal newline characters.Google, citing "complaints from the developer community" has pulled the application from HuddleChat and posted an explanation instead. Gruber isn't satisfied. "Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong," he writes. "It's creepy, in a Microsoft-of-the-'90s way, when it's a $150 billion company cloning an app from a 10-person company."
don't be evil
Google keeps Tibet riots on Youtube, off Google News
After China's Internet censors blocked access to YouTube because of clips depicting riots in Tibet, Google immediately began work to restore access to the online-video site in the country. But news stories regarding the Tibet protest remain censored from Google News China, Blogoscoped's Phillip Lenssen reports. Below, screenshots from Google News Hong Kong, which features the Tibet protests, and Google News China, which does not. More »
lazy valleywag
Google kills babies?
A tipster emails us to ask about strange goings-on at the Googleplex.A co-worker of mine just left the Google campus in Mountain View and reported that there's a single protester out front with a picket sign that reads "Google kills babies". Can someone investigate?Well, can you?
your privacy is an illusion
In Korea, you have to be 19 to learn about sexual harassment from Google
Sexual harassment is no laughing matter, people. But age verification on the Internet is a joke. It's easy for users to lie and, in this case, age verification serves only to bar youth from reality. Below, screenshots showing that in South Korea, Google asks users their age before finishing a search on the term "sexual harassment." More »
don't be evil
Google restores YouTube clip depicting Russian prisoner abuse
Born in Soviet Russia, Google cofounder Sergey Brin likes to declare his opposition to censorship against free speech. But he has a hard time keeping the rest of Google on the same page. In December, lawyers for the jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky posted a video to YouTube which appears to depict violent abuse in the Yekaterinburg prisoner camp. After a February 12 Wall Street Journal editorial directed readers to the video, YouTube moderators removed it. Now, but only after protests, it's back. Clip — NSFTWI, or not safe for the willfully ignorant, at Google or elswehere — below. More »
google
U.N. critic accuses Google of censorship
Inner City Press editor and self-appointed United Nations watchdog Matthew Lee says Google banned his site from Google News because he wrote an article critical of the company. Lee told Fox News that at a press conference to announce a partnership between Google and the United Nations last November, he Google why it hadn't signed a U.N.-sponsored global human-rights compact. Google, Lee says, responded harshly. And on February 13, it blocked Inner City Press from Google News. More »
great moments in journalism
Google more evil than the World Trade Center was
Harper's Magazine has this to report: Google's motto may be "Don't be evil," but the profitmongers in fact are evil. Why? Google's plan to build a massive datacenter complex in Oregon "has triggered an arms race" that has lead Microsoft and Yahoo to build their own gargantuan server farms. These server farms, Harper's warns, will combine to draw more than "90 megawatts of electricity — more than the World Trade Center humming at peak power on a hot summer day." For this reason, Harper's opines, Google's "motto is perhaps due for an addendum: 'Lead others not into temptation.'" Oh, that's what happened with the WTC. I always wondered.
don't be evil
This YouTube video got the featured officer, Salvatore Rivieri, suspended. Great, Google. Now the kid's never going to learn to respect authority. Or that a "dude works on a ranch."
YouTube prevents punk kid from learning his lesson
This YouTube video got the featured officer, Salvatore Rivieri, suspended. Great, Google. Now the kid's never going to learn to respect authority. Or that a "dude works on a ranch."
don't be poor
Google chef in homeless shelter
Google's cafeterias are an arm of its PR machine. One can read endless paeans to their free, organic, locally-sourced, employee-engorging meals. But you'll never read about how they're serving up homelessness as a side dish. Google pays its chefs so little that at least one has ended up in a San Francisco homeless shelter, unable to find a $1,000/mo. studio he can afford.
google
