Deconstructing Google´s "Don´t be evil"

Do you remember good old times when Google´s corporate values may be summarized in "Don´t be evil" slogan? The world famous motto was created by two employees back in 2000 and included in the founders´ letter forwarded prior to their initial public offering in 2004.

Things look a bit different now and PR guys must be very busy these months. PRISM scandal is putting them and top US internet companies in a tough position because of their collaboration with NSA, FBI and other agencies. Obviously Google denies the existence of a government backdoor but the accusations started more than two years ago.

It would take weeks to list all controversies related to its privacy policies. Google has been sistematically investigated in every relevant jurisdiction. Stret View service is been fined or even prohibited in many countries but Google Glass is the next revolution that infuriated and increasingly worried data protection authorities will be facing next year.

In May 2013, Google had to deal with a hot potato in UK and other countries regarding their tax policy, that moves most of its profits in Europe through Ireland and the Netherlands to tax haven Bermuda and helped to reduce their overseas effective rate to a tiny 2.4%. Eric Schmidt argued that all they do it is fully compliant with current legislation and it is called capitalism. That is true but I fully agree with Philip Stephens´ argument that after that arrogant statement, Google can´t pretend to be a good corporate citizen.

Google´s decision to launch a censored search service in China in 2006 amid widespread criticism was the first turning point for the "Don´t be evil" motto. They accepted to remove certain sensitive information from the search results including Tiananmen Square protests or sites supporting independence movements of Tibet. But doing business it´s not easy with Chinese guys and in 2010 they moved to Hong Kong to offer uncensored services, after alleged Chinese-originated cyberattacks to its services. 

 

Google´s Books project, an ambitious plan to scan and make readable millions of books, has also been controversial and criticized for copyright violation. Both authors and publishers sued Google and the issue could not be settled in 2008 despite Google´s proposal to pay $125 million. Recently Google reached an agreement with publishers that allow them to choose whether books would be digitized or not. However, the litigation still remains with authors.

Disputes with publishers for copyright accumulate in lawyers offices. Last January they announced a €60 million agreement with French publishers to be dedicated to a digital publishing fund as an alternative solution to pay for Google News links. The company will also help publishers to make money off online adds. Not surprisingly, Google faced a similar fight with German publishers but the solution for this case was different: publishers will have to confirm whether they want to appear in News results. Google decided to turn it to an opt-in system after an amendment in German copyright law. Spain is waiting in the corner.

In the same way, Youtube has faced lawsuits for copyright infringement almost from its creation. Viacom has been the most aggresive plaintiff ... unsuccessfylly so far. There are tons of complaints about the way Youtube handles the unauthorized uploading of copyrighted materials and even allegations that Google profited from pirated content. Company´s response for that is Content ID, a system that creates an ID file for copyrighted video and audio material, stores it in a database and flags a copyright violation notice in case it matches with a video uploaded by a user, which ultimately poses a lot of the work on the right holders side and fails to understand when content is fair use or in public domain. Something similar happens with videos containing defamation, pornography and other controversial content - Youtube rely on users to flag the content as innapropiate. Their argument for not being more proactive is the huge amount of content uploaded every day to the service (more than 60 hours of video every minute).

Moving to a different topic, Google and other internet giants are advocating for net neutrality. They argue that regulation should protect the openness of the Internet and encourage investment in broadband infrastructure. It sounds pretty cool but it seems to be in clear conflict with the lack of transparency of their search algorithm and the accusations and civil actions taken against Google for page ranking manipulations and even worse discrimination of competing services. Actually, Google is facing a serious antitrust case in Europe related to the way the search engine works and whether it abuses of its dominant position in the market. Company´s proposals  for settlement has been recently rejected by EU Competition Commissioner.

 

Google is a great company but there is a problem: is simply too big. Just as an example: today there are over 900 million Android devices in the world when five years ago there were none. And this guys have a big pocket to keep growing to infinite with new adquisitions. This giant size gives you a lot a dominion but great power also corrupts as Eric K. Clemons illustrates in this unmissable article. In my humble opinion, no other company has been so powerful so far.

 

By the way, did you hear the new term googlization? No? Then check Siva Vaidhyanathan blog and discover how does it affect your day-by-day and why you should start to worry unless US and European competition authorities finally realize what is going on.

 

So Google, now that you have become an empire, why don´t you consider shiftting your motto to "Make (a lot of) money and dominate the world"? or "Googlizate everything"? It would definitely be more clear and straightforward ...

 

Finally and for sake of clarity, all posts in the blog reflect my personal views that may not be shared by the company I am working for.