"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) for Google, established by Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit. Buchheit, who suggested the slogan in a meeting, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, particularly our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."

"Don't be evil" is said to recognize that large corporations can often maximize short-term profits with actions that destroy long-term brand image and competitive position. By instilling a Don't Be Evil culture, the corporation establishes a baseline for decision making that can enhance the trust and image of the corporation that outweighs short-term gains from violating the Don't Be Evil principles.

While many companies have ethical codes to govern their conduct, Google made "Don't Be Evil" a central pillar of their identity, and part of their self-proclaimed core values. In 2006, when Google declared their self-censorship move into China, their "Don't be evil" motto was somewhat replaced with an "evil scale" balancing systems allowing smaller evils for a greater good, as explained by CEO Eric Schmidt at the time.

Origin of the motto

According to John Battelle's book on Google, The Search, the phrase "Don't be evil" was not coined by Brin or Larry Page, but rather by Paul Buchheit, the engineer behind Gmail:On July 19, 2001, about a dozen early employees met to mull over the founders' directive [to elucidate Google's core values] ... The meeting soon became cluttered with the kind of easy and safe corporate clichés that everyone can support, but that carry little impact: Treat Everyone with Respect, for example, or Be on Time for Meetings.
The engineers in the room were rolling their eyes. [Amit] Patel recalls: "Some of us were very anticorporate, and we didn't like the idea of all these specific rules. And engineers in general like efficiency - there had to be a way to say all these things in one statement, as opposed to being so specific."
That's when Paul Buchheit, another engineer in the group, blurted out what would become the most important three words in Google's corporate history. "Paul said, 'All of these things can be covered by just saying, Don't Be Evil,'" Patel recalls. "And it just kind of stuck."
... In the months after the meeting, Patel scribbled "Don't Be Evil" in the corner of every whiteboard in the company... The message spread, and it was embraced, particularly by Page and Brin... "I think it's much better than Be Good or something," Page jokes. "When you are making decisions, it causes you to think. I think that's good."

Avoiding conflicts of interest

In their 2004 founders' letter prior to their initial public offering, Lawrence E. Page and Sergey Brin explained that their "Don't be evil" culture prohibited conflicts of interest, and required objectivity and an absence of bias:Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a well-run newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers' payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.

Because Google holds great power over the information the public relies on, the company recognizes a fiduciary duty to uphold the public trust by refusing payments that would influence the information they provide to users. The company holds themselves to journalism ethics and standards even when they could earn more money in the short term by violating those standards.

Controversy

See also: Criticism of Google

Some products and actions by Google have been accused of contradicting the company's "Don't be evil" ethic; Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch strongly condemned Google's compliance with China's Golden Shield Project. calling it a form of self-censorship. However, others[attribution believe that Google allowed their search engine to be used because a censored search engine is better than no engine. According to Amnesty,

hese forms of censorship seem to contradict the very principles that Google - whose unofficial motto is "do not be evil" - was founded upon. Until January 2006, Google's Support Centre claimed that it "does not censor results for any search term", but removed this claim after reaching its deal with China.