[[email protected]: Re: Saying “ Do no evil ” excludes you from any serious conversation about Google]

----- Forwarded message from Aaron Swartz <[email protected]> -----

Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:32:36 -0400
From: Aaron Swartz <[email protected]>
To: Kragen Javier Sitaker <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Saying “Do no evil” excludes you from any serious conversation about Google

What's wrong with impossible goals? In ethics, it seems only right to strive
for perfection (what's the alternative? to try to do a little evil?). This
doesn't mean anyone who fails should go to hell; fortunately hell does not
exist.

The paradigmatic example of DBE is that Google could succeed in the market
without selling result placement or pinch the monkey banner ads. This isn't
a claim about net good, as you suggest--it's easy to argue that if customers
flocked to a Google with bought results or annoying ads, they were getting a
huge net benefit, especially over competitors who had both plus no
intelligent ranking technology. DBE was meant to head net evil thinking off
at the pass. There were just some lines Google would not cross.

It is different from DNE but not in the way you suggest. It was about how
power corrupts, not about individual mistakes. And power corrupts through
exactly the net benefit logic you claim the principle allows. I think they
knew that and thus the slogan was a reminder to be constantly on guard.

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