Don't Be Evil

Celebrating Google's 27th birthday
Shavon Nand
Screenshot of Google's homepage from their 27th birthday. The Doodle artwork features Google's first-ever logo.
Screenshot of Google's homepage from their 27th birthday. The Doodle artwork features Google's first-ever logo.

We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. [1]

In 2018, over 4,000 Google employees signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in the Pentagon's Project Maven.[2][3] Google's involvement with this Project Maven had been concealed through a third-party contractor called ECS Federal. [4][5][6] Project Maven used artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery that could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.[2:1][3:1] Some employees resigned in protest, while others were openly advocating for the company to cancel the contract.[3:2]

Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public's trust. By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn't make this any less risky for Google. Google's unique history, its motto Don't Be Evil, and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart.[1:1]

In response to all of this, Google said it wouldn't renew the contract[3:3] and Google CEO Sundar Pichai offered rules for the company's use of artificial intelligence.[7] The guiding principles forbade work on weapons and surveillance projects "violating internationally accepted norms."[8]

Around the same time as the Project Maven protests, Google removed the "Don't Be Evil" clause from its code of conduct. [9]

"Don't be evil" has been part of the company's corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, "do the right thing." However, Google retained its original "don't be evil" language until the past several weeks.[9:1]

In a 2013 NPR interview, Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman at the time, stated that he thought Don't be evil "was the stupidest rule ever, because there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something."[10]

In 2016, Eric Schmidt, now Alphabet's executive chair, became chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board.[8:1] Google won the Project Maven contract in late 2017.[8:2]

SCHMIDT: So what happens is, I'm sitting in this meeting, and we're having this debate about an advertising product. And one of the engineers pounds his fists on the table and says, that's evil. And then the whole conversation stops, everyone goes into conniptions, and eventually we stopped the project. So it did work.[10:1]

In 2021, over 1,100 Google and Amazon employees wrote an open letter demanding that Google drop Project Nimbus.[11] Project Nimbus is a $1.2bn contract to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government. [12] In 2022, hundreds of Google and Amazon employees and their supporters protested outside of company offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Durham, N.C., demanding that the tech giants end their Project Nimbus contracts.[11:1][13]

And again in 2023, Google employees published another open letter, this time demanding that "Google stop providing material support to this genocide by canceling its Project Nimbus contract and immediately cease doing business with the Israeli apartheid government and military."[14]

This is genocide. By supplying artificial intelligence and other technology to Israel, Google is complicit in the mass surveillance that enables the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians, the root cause of the unfolding violence.[11:2]

Workers looking to express support for Palestinians said that they faced hostility.[15]

Google managers have called employees "sick" and a "lost cause" for showing empathy towards the besieged residents of Gaza, and have even publicly asked Arab and Muslim Googlers if they support Hamas as a response to those Googlers expressing empathy or concern for Palestinian families' safety.[14:1]

Google employees were able to successfully dissuade the company from Project Maven. But it seems very unlikely that they will be able to achieve the same results with Project Nimbus.[8:3]

It would be challenging for any employee protest to achieve the scale or impact of the Maven protests. Google's legendarily freewheeling internal culture has become more locked-down since then. [8:4]

References

  1. Google Employees' Letter to Sundar Pichai Regarding Project Maven ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. 'The Business of War': Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Google Will Not Renew Pentagon Contract That Upset Employees ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones ↩︎

  5. Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project ↩︎

  6. Google AI Tech Will Be Used for Virtual Border Wall, CBP Contract Shows ↩︎

  7. Google Sets Limits on Its Use of AI but Allows Defense Work ↩︎

  8. 3 Years After the Project Maven Uproar, Google Cozies to the Pentagon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Plays Not My Job ↩︎ ↩︎

  11. Workers Call on Google Leadership to Drop Nimbus and Publicly Condemn Genocide in Gaza ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  12. We are Google and Amazon workers. We condemn Project Nimbus ↩︎

  13. Google, Amazon employees protest tech giants' contract with Israel as worker activism ramps up ↩︎

  14. Open Letter: Google Workers Condemn Internal Culture of Hate, Abuse, and Retaliation ↩︎ ↩︎

  15. Google's Open Culture Collides With the Israel-Hamas War ↩︎