Google's informal corporate motto 'Don't Be Evil' has been in discussion again this week. It certainly was when Jonathan Macdonald and I had lunch on Monday.
Sorry Jonathan (and aesthetes everywhere), I couldn't resist.
I don't even feel this way about google.
I guess what I mean is mottos should be positive rather than negative.
I agree.. too much negative words in that motto. How about "Do good."? :)
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Makes you wonder why they didn't choose that as a directive doesn't it? Too restrictive perhaps? What does that say about the way they feel they have to go about doing business? Probably not as much as we're reading into it. But the positive message would be both better pr and offer more direction to teams.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that they exactly chose "don't be evil". Accounts of its origins tend to include the phrase "it just kind of stuck". Anyway, I think that it offers far more direction - in this case "good" isn't quite the opposite of "evil". It was about "evil" in the sense that people say Microsoft is evil. Everyone at Google already knew what they did want to do ("Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.") This was about reminding them what to avoid along the way.
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