#dontbeevil

Back in the day, “Don’t be evil” was Google’s way of saying, “We’re not like the other tech giants.” They wanted to be the good guys—building tools to make the world better, not just to make bank. And for a while, it worked. It was quirky, memorable, and gave off underdog vibes. But then Google became, well, Google. A trillion-dollar behemoth with fingers in every digital pie—search, ads, cloud, AI, you name it. And with great power comes… great scrutiny.

The motto started to feel like a trap. Every time Google made a questionable move—like that time they considered a censored search engine for China (Project Dragonfly) or got flak for data privacy scandals—people would point and say, “Uh, isn’t that kinda evil?” It was like the motto became a stick for critics to whack them with. X posts from around that time show folks calling it hypocritical, especially when Google got cozy with military contracts like Project Maven. Employees even protested, and that motto was front and center in the debates.

By 2015, when Google restructured under Alphabet, the vibe shifted. “Don’t be evil” felt too simplistic for a company juggling global regulations, billion-dollar deals, and ethical gray areas. They swapped it for “Do the right thing,” which sounds nice but, let’s be real, is way vaguer. It’s like going from a punk rock anthem to a corporate mission statement. Some say it was about dodging accountability—harder to call out “wrong” than “evil.” Others think it was just Google growing up, trading idealism for pragmatism.

But here’s what gets me: that motto meant something to people. It was a promise, a vibe, a reminder that tech could be human. Dropping it feels like admitting the world’s too messy for simple slogans. And maybe it is. Still, I can’t help but wonder—what does “the right thing” even mean when profit and power are on the line?