I recognize that Google’s motto is not (the oft-misquoted) “Do no evil”. It’s the much easier-to-achieve mandate of “Don’t be evil”. But even that very low bar is one Google doesn’t seem to be hitting any more, and they don’t seem interested in trying to.<\/p>\n
The latest “Google being evil” story, where it turns out they’ve been tricking Safari browsers into allowing tracking that they’re supposed to block<\/a>, is by no means the only recent example. It’s just the one that’s gotten the most press — and a great place to start. <\/p>\n Part of the commotion is that the particular way that Google circumvented Safari’s privacy settings wound up completely undoing Safari’s privacy<\/em> where Doubleclick was concerned. That’s the part Google didn’t really intend to do. But what they did<\/em> intend to do was explicitly bypass Safari’s privacy settings<\/strong>, at least where their own +1<\/span> button was concerned. They wrote special-case code, served only to Safari browsers, which was designed to trick the browser<\/strong> into believing that the user was interacting with the +1<\/span> button — even though the user was doing no such thing.<\/p>\n But this is not the only evil thing Google’s done in the past few months.<\/p>\n There’s also the way they helped sponsor this year’s CPAC<\/a>, which gave prominent slots to white-power advocates and hate groups<\/a>. And then there’s the recent privacy change, and their ridiculous cop-out on #NymWars<\/a>, which disproportionately affects people whose voices are already too marginalized<\/a>… and all that is on top of the stuff I posted about a year and a half ago<\/em><\/a>, giving a litany of pretty evil things Google had done.<\/p>\n Around the same time, I posted a blog entry asking why Apple was still considered a “good guy”<\/a> by geeks. At this point, I feel that question is much<\/em> more appropriately directed at Google.<\/p>\n Google is no longer the happy, friendly company it once was. It is not a company I can support any more. I’m deleting my Google+ account, and looking for alternatives to Google Contacts and Calendar (which I’m really mostly using because of my Android smartphone<\/a>). If you’re a geek who works for Google? Leave. Stop being a party to their evil.<\/strong> I know it takes a few months to find a job in Bay Area tech circles, but with Google on your résumé, you can surely find something.<\/p>\n