Google removes legendary ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto from code of conduct – should we be worried?

FOR nearly two decades, Google has operated under one chief motto: "Don't be evil."

But that iconic rule has now been scrapped from the company's code of conduct preface – should we be worried?

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Google first adopted "don't be evil" as a motto around the year 2000.

It was suggested by Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, who later said the motto should be "something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out".

He also said the motto was "a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent".

But Google binned the motto from its headline position in the official code of conduct.

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At the beginning of 2018, the preface of Google's code of conduct included the line: "'Don't be evil.' Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But 'don't be evil' is much more than that..."

It went on: "The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put 'don't be evil' into practice..."

However, at some point in late April or early May, Google removed the motto from the preface.

So rather than mentioning it four times through the code of conduct, it's now only referenced once, at the very bottom of the 6,337-word document.

That means Google removed the three most prominent mentions of the motto, which previously headed up the entire document.

So, should we be worried?
Google has come under fire for a host of rogue business practices in recent years.

It has faced several anti-trust investigations from the EU, resulting in billions of dollars of fines.

And more recently, Google has been blasted by its own employees.

Furious Google staffers complained that the company was working with the US Department of Defence to supply AI tech for a controversial military program called Project Maven.

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Thousands of employees signed a petition asking for the Pentagon contract to be cancelled.

"We can no longer ignore our industry's and our technologies' harmful biases, large-scale breaches of trust, and lack of ethical safeguards," it read.

"These are life and death stakes."

At least a dozen Google employees are reported to have resigned in protest over the ongoing partnership.

Do you think Google is about to turn to the dark side? Let us know in the comments!

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