An Evil Business

It's been a good couple of years for the word evil because both the President of the United States, and the management team of the worlds' most visible company (Google) have put it in their respective mission statements. The word hasn't had this much press since the Salem Witch Trials.

For the President, idiology and hyperbole can work. It engergizes the base. But I think the guys at Google are going to regret saying it. Because they're going to be a business soon. And as evidenced by lots of recent decisions they've had to make, businesses have lots of factors to consider when making decisions. And usually the ones about 'what will make us more money?' wind up winning out over 'what would a hippie do?'.

Consider what they've done in just the last few weeks:

• They've put Gmail into test, pissing off the privacy fear mongers.
• They've stopped taking gambling ads in response to silly government pressure, pissing off the 14 guys who actually own those millions of gambling sites and the thousands of affiliates who earn good money from them.
• They've removed perfectly good web pages from their listings at the behest of hollywood and other large and clearly oppressive business interests, pissing off anybody who still believes in freedom of speech.
• They've started supporting banner ads via Adsense, pissing off those opposed to colored pixels and those who think that subtle commerce is somehow more acceptable than garish commerce.

And clearly this is just the beginning. The point isn't that any of these moves are right or wrong. Clearly there are some of both :-) Mostly I'd say their moves, or more precisely their ability and willingness to move, have been quite impressive. If they can get all this done running on a few hundred $k, I can't wait to see what they do with $1.6 billion.

The point is that when you promise to be a saint everybody gets their own idea of what you mean, and it doesn't take too long before a great many people are disappointed. I'm afraid there's a backlash brewing here to the Google-love-fest that's been going on, and the boys themselves put the kettle on and turned up the heat. The press is going to love it. It'll be great for the blog-o-sphere. Too bad it largely didn't need to happen. 

Posted by Craig Danuloff at May 13, 2004 10:09 PM