Call me a cynic, but I believe that the actions of publicly traded companies are all, ultimately, only informed by the need to make more money. So it’s interesting Google chose to include the famous “Do No Evil” part in their corporate philosophy.[For the record: it really says "You can make money without doing evil"]
So why did they put it there? A lot of people believe it’s a slight to Microsoft. Google is “going to get them”. And why not – it’s certainly all the rage to see Google as the Anti-Antichrist. The savior to deliver us from the clutches of evil. And, like Mulder says, “I want to believe”.
Then again, it really is highly unusual for a public company to actually be interested in doing good. (Or evil, for that matter). The bottom line is driving the decisions. So let’s take a look at Googles offerings and see if we can gain some clue.
- GMail – sort of like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and several others.
- DejaNews – The old usenet news groups
- Google News – sort of like any other news outlet
- Froogle – sort of like Pricewatch
- Orkut – sort of like Friendster and thirty million other social networks.
- Blogger – sort of like any other blogging service
- Picasa – sort of like hello.com and dotPhoto photo sharing services
So Google is two-for-eight in the leadership market for me-too web services. (Yes, Google and GMail redefined their market. They’re still second movers).
But if you look at their services, there is one core theme – increasing the usefulness of information by aggregating it. Nobody else is doing this to the extent Google is doing this, and nobody else has the amount of research and experience behind this kind of technology.
The missing piece is the fact that Google wants to keep that information on their servers, and it wants to collect as much information as possible. Customers need to be willing to trust Google with their data.
Google needs the good will of their customers. Web Services don’t have a strong lock-in – so it’s important to keep your customers liking you. (In that context, it is interesting to see GMail still not offering easy backup to your local machine. Lock-in is important, even if it is only a soft lock-in.) This good will becomes even more important if you consider Google’s money comes from advertising – something many people think is “unclean”.
That is a major paradigm shift. And that is the reason Google has to position itself as the good guy. Not because they’re fundamentally opposed to Microsoft, or “evil” business practices, but because they need people to absolutely trust them with their personal data.
You’re right, morality and economics have nothing to do with one another.
And that’s a very interesting point on Google. Part of the reason I’m leery of using their services beyond their search is precisely what you pointed out; I simply don’t trust that much information in one place. Eventually, probably when the founders are ousted somehow (and that’s the other great inevitability of a publicly-traded company; eventually the stock will drop and the founders will get the boot), that will be used for great, great evil.