Google has 'outgrown' its 14-year old mission statement, says Larry Page

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/03/larry-page-google-dont-be-evil-sergey-brin

by Libertatea • 12 years ago

64 33 12 years ago

theguardian.com

porter• 12 years ago

It's like trying to figure out a new mission after you've already taken over the world. What the heck comes after that?

ape4• 12 years ago

Mars

fidotron• 12 years ago

They really haven't taken over the world, but they have run out of relatively low hanging fruit to attack.

As gets pointed out a lot, their fundamental problem is an allergy to business models which involve humans in the workflow, and this will continue to be their problem as they simply haven't learned how to deal with people properly.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

The hardest part is to put yourself back into the 2nd runner mindset. The world is moving, you'll have to take over it again or join Kodak et al.

swframe• 12 years ago

I suspect a lot of the difficult world problems relate to poverty. The first job of "real" AI should be to better employ the under employed.

Google (along with other highly successful companies) should provide the work environment and training programs for people in the 3rd world that will allow them to earn enough to become customers of 1st world businesses; similar to the way china buys US bonds that enable the US to buy chinese products. I think the first job of the 3rd world worker should be to transform their environment to 1st world standards.

This will be extremely challenging. For example, there aren't enough resources to make the 3rd world into the 1st world. Those are the problems that google should hire 3rd world workers to solve.

jeremyjarvis• 12 years ago

Are they now actively planning on being evil?

rl3• 12 years ago

Considering their recent acquisitions on the cutting edge of robotics and artificial intelligence research, I certainly hope not.

jgilliam• 12 years ago

The Guardian's headline is very misleading. Google's mission statement is not "don't be evil" - it's "to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Larry Page is clearly referring to the mission statement that may need to change, not "Don't be evil." This is all made very clear in the original FT article The Guardian cites, they just chose to go for a more inaccurate and salacious framing of the entire story. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3173f19e-5fbc-11e4-8c27-00144...

[edit: the guardian changed the headline!]

pmontra2• 12 years ago

"Don't be evil" is the corporate motto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil That's a very difficult motto to change. Removing it would mean "we're free to do evil now" and that won't be received well. Anyway, I wonder if is there anyone left who thinks Google is still faithful to their motto.

shizcakes• 12 years ago

Given a sufficient cardinality of perspectives, everyone and everything is "evil".

curun1r• 12 years ago

Removing it would mean "we're free to do evil now"

It's a subtle distinction, but the motto is "don't be evil", not "don't do evil." The former allows you to do evil things in service to noble purposes. For example, "don't do evil" would have required the company to shut down services rather than sharing information with the NSA. "Don't be evil" allowed them to balance that evil action against the good created by those services to realize a net-positive societal benefit from offering those services.

logn• 12 years ago

Given their recent AI and robotics, how about:

"to make the world more accessible and useful for the benefit of humanity"

SideburnsOfDoom2• 12 years ago

Given that the robotics part is from the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, who aim to make robots for the US military, some people would disagree with that summary. It's a long way from "don't be evil" to "we're a defense contractor".

gress3• 12 years ago

So they're just giving up on organizing the world's information having failed?

kllrnohj• 12 years ago

No, they are just doing a hell of a lot more than search these days.

camillomiller• 12 years ago

With its Search products Google is already shaping the Western World views and culture in subtle ways not everybody's noticing. In doing that, almost always in a purely algorithmic way without human intervention, the "evil" threshold has been passed many times. Again, without anyone really noticing. In other words, it was an old motto already.

api• 12 years ago

I'd consider it far more evil if it were with human intervention.

gress3• 12 years ago

It is with human intervention, so please consider it far more evil.

Each individual search is of course determined algorithmically, but the criteria for relevance that the algorithm applies are chosen by Google employees.

tonyplee• 12 years ago

It is always with human intervention - whoever controls the ranking algorithm controls the display results. That's power of Google. Simple change of ranking algorithm can drop some website's traffic by 80%-90% for good or bad.

NN88• 12 years ago

Basically the CIA long con?

Zigurd• 12 years ago

How about "Enable knowledge of good and evil."

daveloyall• 12 years ago

I would go so far as to suggest that this link be ignored and this one be viewed instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8539114

Kiro• 12 years ago

This article previously stated that “don’t be evil” was part of Google’s mission statement, and has been corrected.

Change the title.

dsugarman• 12 years ago

when you so vastly outgrow your mission statement, antitrust issues are likely present

Google has 'outgrown' its 14-year old mission statement, says Larry Page

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