I don’t believe for one moment that Google are evil; it’s a baseless idea that most intelligent people reject as sensationalist.
The embodiment of good, however, has to be more than just the absence of wickedness. And a motto of simply not being evil does little to reassure me of a company’s intentions.
Imagine, for example, a person described as “not evil“. This wouldn’t exactly be a reassuring endorsement, yet this is the line that Google have chosen to draw in the sand.
If Google used my data for their own purposes, this would never be described as evil.
If they sold my private data to a third-party, this wouldn’t be evil either.
In fact on the scale that goes from good to evil, there’s a tremendous amount of awfulness that you can get away with and still not get close to the end of the axis.
Don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of what Google does, and my business is largely based on their products and services.
But I find it incredible that few choose to question the wisdom of trusting a company who merely commit to refrain from wickedness.
In the scale of aspirations that’s remarkably low.
