Schmidt: No, really, We're Not Evil... Honest Guv....
Google CEO defends privacy policies
CNet, her who shall not credit sources, have a nice snippet from Schmidts speach at the Gartner Symposium yesterday, defending their "do no evil slogan" in regards to privacy...
"Google does not discover things that are not public," said Schmidt, answering questions on the stage of the Gartner Symposium here Wednesday. "Many people are disturbed to find their home phone number. But we found it because it was a public piece of information."
In response to a question about how Google treats consumer privacy, he tried to illustrate how the company's don't-be-evil philosophy trumps technology by recounting a meeting he attended with company co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. In it, a business executive suggested a particular change at Google.
"One of the engineers says, 'That's evil.' It was like setting off a bomb in the middle of the table," Schmidt said. The concern was taken seriously: "You can pull the ripcord and stop the production line."
'That's evil.' It was like setting off a bomb in the middle of the table
That must be an old saying - I believe what they say now is: "Thats evil! - it was like offloading a truck load of candy in a kindergarten" :)
hehehe
The degree of evil depends on whether you're the dentist profiting from the cavities, or the parent paying for the dental work?
Am I the only one...
Who thinks that the whole 'do no evil' thing is a bit childish and contrived?
Trust me.
It is.
yes, i think it is...
i read a comment somewhere once (wish i could remember where) that basically said they said the definition of 'evil' was whatever sergey (i think) said it was. and it was quoted with them smiling and laughing about it.
things change when you're a public company, imho. it's one of the reasons the news media over here in the US are so horrible - they're beholden to the stockholders moreso than the citizens they're supposed to be serving...
Dan Senor
From the White House bio of Mr. Senor:
Dan Senor is a Senior Advisor to Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Senor traveled to Baghdad in mid-April in one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of the former regime. He has been serving in Iraq since, advising Amb. Bremer on a variety of policy and communications issues. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Senor was based at Centcom Headquarters in Qatar, where he was Director of the Coalition Information Center. Senor has also served as a Legislative Aide, Press Secretary, and Communications Director for then-Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI). Senor completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Who is Google planning to invade?
Here's How I Think That Conversation Really Went...
Put this on my blog last night and it seemed to get a few laughs. Have a good weekend everybody. Hope that "Bourbon" treated everyone well.
> Director of the Coalition Information Center
Didn't know that, but it seems appropriate for a VP of global communications at Google. The army and Google has one thing in common regarding external communications: Lots of talk with no information.
Apart from that, all the "evil" stuff is nothing but something funny for people to talk about - it's a PR thing. Simply put it's a great marketing advantage to hold the patent on everything that's not "evil" (or some similarly laden words). Implicit in this is the tacit statement that "as we don't do evil, our competitors are the ones who do".
Implicit in this is the tacit statement that "as we don't do evil, our competitors are the ones who do".
I too believe it's now only so much spin, though I think that it likely started out as a 'real' mission statement tossed out by a couple of (then) grad students.
That said, danger lies in the simplicity. There's a feeling of betrayal emerging, much of it unfounded, but small gray cracks seem huge and black on a white background.