So Google rolls out the Buzz feature of Gmail which exposes your place of employment to abusive ex-husbands (1) or allows repressive governments around the word to harvest your Gmail contact list (2).  After publically smacking the government of the world's largest country (that's China btw) about hacking Gmail to harvest dissident contact information (3), Google then adds it as a default feature.

Has anyone noticed the supreme irony that:  Paul Bucheit, who originated Gmail (4) also originated the "don't be evil" meme (5) still used by Google (6).  It is further irony that Paul is no longer employed by Google (7) and the corporate dissembling is in full force to restrict what the motto means:

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally -- following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.  (8)

Doesn't this seem to have a hole billions of people wide?  Unless you are a "user", evil is OK?  ... but "Don't be evil" is too easy a target and not everyone seems to think Google is really serious about it anyway (9).

Rather, let's switch to Google's own core mission:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." (10).  ... but what exactly is "the world's information"?  Does information really belong to the world as a commons (11) or does it inherently belong to the creator (12)?  Indeed, if you search for the term "massive copyright infringement" in Google itself, every one of the top 10 search results have Google's name on it.  Every one.

I argue here that Google has a defect in its corporate DNA. The Buzz dustup is only the latest in a series of privacy over-extensions which have to be corrected after they are unleashed on the public. The term "the world's information" is failing to acknowledge that information does not always belong to the world.  Such myopia is hardwired into their own mission statement.  A good start would be changing the mission phrase to "the world's public information". Such a distinction means that it is up to Google to ASK if information is public before they "make it universally accessible".  If this too much to ask of one of the world's largest companies, tough.

references

(1) http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/fuck-you-google but since apparently requiring login

(2) ibid

(3) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

(4) http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-16-n55.html

(5) ibid

(6) http://investor.google.com/conduct.html

(7) http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-16-n55.html

(8) http://investor.google.com/conduct.html

(9) http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-says-googles-dont-be-evil-motto-is-bullshit-2010-1

(10) http://investor.google.com/faq.html

(11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

(12) http://uspto.gov/ip/global/copyrights/basics.jsp

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