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  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Wow, where to start with this.

    1. Google didn’t “have” to “remove” their motto. As part of the restructuring to have Alphabet as a holding company that includes Google, Alphabet’s motto was “Do the right thing”. They argued at the time that “evil” is hard to define, and that the goal shouldn’t just be to avoid evil, but to do good. There’s nothing that made them “have” to do that. But, maybe you could argue that it generated a lot of negative press for them, so they felt pressure to change.
    2. The “Don’t be evil” motto is, itself, a reference to Microsoft. It came about sometime between 1999 and 2001, when Microsoft was on trial for their evil acts. Abusing their monopoly to drive Netscape out of business, in particular. Some might argue that Google has also abused their monopoly, but it would be hard to argue that they did it in the same evil way as Microsoft, who used Internet Explorer to destroy standard HTML, fractured Javascript by creating JScript, destroyed Java applets by using ActiveX controls, lied about it being impossible to remove Internet Explorer from Windows, falsified evidence at their federal antitrust trial, etc.

    Basically, while you might find Google’s surveillance-capitalism model distasteful, they’re nothing like Microsoft’s true evil.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        That just proves my point. A proposal made in public that many people oppose, vs. Microsoft simply releasing browsers that ignored existing standards and forcing people to deal with their shit.

        You may think that this web environment integrity idea is terrible, I do, but it’s not actually in any browser yet. There’s time to push back on it. There are other browsers which are not going to implement it.

        Compare that to IE where suddenly websites would break because Microsoft released a new browser and just stomped all over existing standards, forcing people to rewrite their websites.

        There’s just no comparison in the level of evil between the two companies.