There’s a common narrative on the Internet that goes like this:

• When Google was founded, they were a young and idealistic and so they wrote “Don’t Be Evil” as their guiding principle.
• Over the years, they’ve slid into Big Tech Evil (insert hand-wringing about capitalism and surveillance and such), and so to reflect their new sociopathic identity, they removed their Don’t Be Evil motto.
• So now Google thinks it’s OK to Do Evil.

This is ridiculous.

Obviously, yes, Google is Big Tech and a lot of people don’t like their surveillance tech, the way using their products hoovers up all kinds of personal data, etc.  I’m not defending Google’s business practices here.  But the “Don’t Be Evil” removal has nothing to do with this.

Google removed the motto in 2018 for the simple reason of avoiding legal exposure.

Only Do Good

If you say to your employees that Don’t Be Evil is the company’s guiding motto, it exposes you to all kinds of legal jeopardy because the concept of “evil” is undefined.  Indeed, Google was sued in 2021 on this basis.  From Wikipedia:

On 29 November 2021, three former Google employees filed a lawsuit alleging that Google’s motto “Don’t be evil” amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant violated, that Google broke their own moral code by firing them as retaliation for their efforts against “evil”, in what the trio thought were in accordance with the principle, in drawing attention to and organizing employees against controversial projects, such as work for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during the first Trump administration which they claimed amounted to “doing evil”, and as such deserve monetary damages.

Was what Google asked them to do “evil”?  You may answer yes or no, but the point is that you’re making that judgement based on your own personal ethics, not on any legal basis.  “Evil” is not defined in law.

What if Google had asked its employees to work on a product that helped ensure that meat stays properly refrigerated in transit?  Is that evil?  If you’re a vegan, you would probably say yes.  What if Google created a web site where you could search for cheap gas prices.  If you feel any use of fossil fuels is evil, then Google might be doing evil in your eyes.

It’s an impossible standard.  In a world where people sue each other for anything – literally anything – giving people this open target is unwise.  Removing “Don’t Be Evil” is not about freeing oneself to go out and do evil.  It’s about reducing legal attack surface.

raindog308

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.