Google's Motto Was 'Do not Be Evil'?

For years, social media customers have claimed Google’s firm motto was as soon as “Do not be evil.” In June 2024, for instance, one X consumer made a post (archived) studying: “TIL: Google’s unique motto was ‘Do not be evil’ which modified to ‘Do the best factor’ once they grew to become Alphabet.”

(X consumer @Dhavalsingh7)

Equally, in a 2015 put up on the r/todayilearned subreddit, a Reddit consumer wrote (archived):

TIL Between 2000-2015, Google had a casual motto of “Do not be evil”. The thought was to have a motto that “as soon as you place it in there, could be exhausting to take out”. When Google started to trace customers in 2012, there was a public backlash to the motto. The motto was changed by “Do the best factor” in 2015.

Some web customers, nevertheless, have asserted that the saying was by no means an official motto. Responding to a 2018 Reddit put up that requested: “Who particularly determined to do away with Google’s ‘Do not’ be evil.’ slogan?”, one commenter wrote (archived), partly: “It was by no means the official motto anyway.”

Equally, in a 2023 dialogue thread concerning the motto on the social information platform Slashdot, one commenter wrote (archived):

It was by no means their precise motto. IIRC there was a division or division that had it as a motto, however not the corporate. However, yeah, to the extent that it was ever “official” it was retracted LONG in the past.

After inspecting the proof for Google’s use of the phrase, we have decided that the declare is generally true: Google did use the catchphrase — which a consultant for the corporate described as an “unofficial motto” — in official communications beginning within the early 2000s, and it continued to make use of the phrase on the time of this writing, although to a extra restricted extent.

Historical past of the Phrase

In line with a 2021 Vox article that included interviews with a number of early Google workers, certainly one of two engineers — Amit Patel or Paul Buchheit — got here up with the phrase someday between the late Nineties and 2001, when the corporate formally adopted it as a part of its first written set of company values. In his 2011 e-book “Within the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives,” Wired editor-at-large Steven Levy reported the identical normal define of occasions; in response to him, Buchheit first steered the motto and Patel subsequently popularized it amongst workers by writing the phrase on whiteboards round Google’s headquarters.

In 2002, because the weblog Quote Investigator found when it appeared into the slogan’s historical past in 2018, the phrase “Do not be evil” made its earliest securely datable look on any web site related to the corporate — particularly, on a landing page titled “Nice Jobs at Google,” aimed toward potential candidates to positions at Google. (We accessed that touchdown web page, like the opposite historic Google webpages mentioned on this part, in archived kind through the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine.)

A body on the left aspect of the “Nice Jobs at Google” web page contained an inventory of “10 Issues Google has discovered to be true” adopted by a paragraph naming “Do not be evil” as one of many firm’s “most cherished core values.”

(Google/Wayback Machine)

A 12 months later, in 2003, a Wired journalist wrote: “Google’s code of conduct may be boiled right down to a mere three phrases: Do not be evil.” In his e-book “Within the Plex,” Levy reported that one early Google worker pointed to this particular article because the second when most people grew to become conscious of the motto, which had beforehand been a “kind of silent code” shared by workers.

In 2004, Google founders Larry Web page and Sergey Brin prominently featured the motto in a founders’ letter included within the firm’s preliminary public opening prospectus. In that letter, a bit with the header “Do not be evil” learn:

Do not be evil. We consider strongly that in the long run, we will probably be higher served-as shareholders and in all different ways-by an organization that does good issues for the world even when we forgo some brief time period positive aspects. This is a vital facet of our tradition and is broadly shared inside the firm.

Additionally in 2004, the slogan appeared within the earliest accessible archived model of Google’s company code of conduct, which started: “Our casual company motto is “Do not be evil.”

(Google/Wayback Machine)

As of February 2008, Google eliminated the phrase “casual company motto” from the code of conduct, which now began merely: “Do not be evil.”

(Google/Wayback Machine)

As a part of the identical 2008 replace, the corporate additionally added an extra occasion of “Do not be evil” to the very finish of the doc, which thereafter concluded by instructing workers: “And keep in mind … do not be evil, and for those who see one thing that you simply suppose is not proper — converse up!”

(Google/Wayback Machine)

Following an October 2015 restructuring, Google grew to become a subsidiary of Alphabet, a newly fashioned public holding firm. Alphabet didn’t use the “Do not be evil” slogan in any of its publicly accessible paperwork, as multiple outlets reported on the time. 

Nevertheless, Google retained the language in its personal code of conduct, as may be seen in an archived version from November 2015.

(Google/Wayback Machine)

In 2018, Google revised its code of conduct to take away point out of the phrase from the preface. The corporate didn’t, nevertheless, take away the exhortation to “keep in mind … do not be evil” from the doc’s ultimate paragraph, the place it remained on the time of this writing.

(Google/Wayback Machine)

An Official or Unofficial Motto?

Media shops which have lined Google’s idiosyncratic use of the phrase “Do not be evil” through the years have used varied totally different phrases to explain it, together with “mantra” and “guiding principle.” Some journalists have described it as an “unofficial motto” or an “informal motto” — the identical time period the corporate utilized in its 2004 company code of conduct. In different circumstances, nevertheless — particularly in articles written in and shortly after 2004, when Web page and Brin used the phrase of their IPO letter, mainstream publications together with Newsweek and GQ used extra official-sounding phrases, characterizing the phrase as a “company motto” or “corporate motto.”

Finally, the time period “motto” itself is acceptable for the phrase in accordance on Merriam-Webster’s entry for the phrase, which it defines partly as “a brief expression of a tenet.”

Nevertheless, the query of whether or not it will possibly rightly be described as an official motto is much less clear. Along with Google’s aforementioned use and subsequent removing of the qualifier “casual” in its code of conduct, Google insiders have made statements in interviews that counsel potential inside disagreement about whether or not the motto was official.

In a 2004 interview with Web page and Brin, for instance, a Playboy reporter requested: “Is your organization motto actually ‘Do not be evil?'” Brin responded: “Sure, it is actual.” When the interviewer adopted up by asking whether or not the motto was a part of a “written code,” Brin answered: “Sure. We’ve got different guidelines, too.” (On the time of this writing, the interview was behind a paywall on Playboy’s web site. Nevertheless, a full transcript of the interview appeared as Appendix B in Google’s publicly available S-1 — the registration kind the Securities and Trade Fee requires U.S. corporations to file once they initially go public.)

(Playboy)

4 years later, in 2008, Marissa Mayer — on the time Google’s vp of search merchandise and consumer expertise — contradicted Brin’s 2004 assertion when, in an interview with an Australian newspaper, she said of the slogan: “It actually wasn’t like an elected, ordained motto.”

Requested to explain Google’s present place on the phrase, a consultant for Google stated over e-mail: “Do not be evil has been an unofficial motto because the early days at Google and stays a part of our Code of Conduct.”

In abstract, on the time of this writing Google didn’t think about “Do not be evil” something greater than a casual, inside motto, and there’s some proof that this has all the time been the case. Nevertheless, the corporate additionally used the phrase “Do not be evil” on a public-facing web page for job candidates as early as 2002. Moreover, Google’s founders, Web page and Brin, selected to make use of the phrase in a letter included with their IPO prospectus in 2004. The identical 12 months, Brin responded within the affirmative to the Playboy interviewer who requested if the corporate’s motto was “actually ‘Do not be evil.'”

Moreover, though the corporate eliminated point out of the slogan from its the preface to its company code of conduct in 2018, the phrase did nonetheless seem on the finish of the doc in essentially the most lately up to date model accessible on the time of this writing. In different phrases, whereas Google now not seems to embrace the motto to the identical diploma it did within the early 2000s, the corporate has by no means disavowed it or eliminated all cases of it from its official communications.

For these causes, we have rated the declare as largely true, which means its major parts are demonstrably true, however a number of the ancillary particulars are unsupported by the proof.

Sources