Expose:

A List of Reasons Why Google Isn’t Evil

November 16, 2009 by Kyle Brady
Tags: Corporations, Evil, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Protocols, Software
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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There's been alot of talk recently about Google "being evil", because they have their hands in so many product arenas and have access to substantial amounts of user data, so it's time that someone pointed out why Google isn't "evil" or even becoming so.

First, look at it from Google’s perspective:

• their main interest is indexing the largest amount of content possible, and doing it fast so the content’s relevant


• the majority of the modern internet, everything from server to browser to protocols, is at least ten years old at the core


• Google’s results are only as good as their relevance and are sorted properly, so they have a vested interest in attempting to do so

Now, look at their behaviors:

• “Webmaster Tools” was arguably the first attempt by Google to make things faster/better on their own, by allowing webmasters to help Google better access sites


• Chrome takes marketshare away from Internet Explorer, which is beneficial to all mankind


• Javascript engine developments, like those found in Chrome, are a good thing – especially when they’re spread back to the community.  JS is notoriously slow in some browsers, and even in the fastest of them can still be sluggish


• the HTML standards have been bogged down in meetings for years, and have achieved next to nothing – so Google’s begun pushing things like <video>, rather than wait for the W3C, who could take many more years to produce the same results


• Google has contributed highly to languages like Python, PHP, and MySQL because of their intense usage of them – creating a language entirely is only a half step away from helping optimize pre-existing languages


• wanting to augment the HTTP protocol, and presumably make it backwards compatible, is a good goal:  HTTP is pretty slow at times, especially over things like 3G wireless networks. If it can be expanded to do more, or do things better, this benefits everyone

In case this isn’t easily pieced all together, here’s the gist:  Google may be doing lots of things out of semi-self-interest, but people need to remember that they’re not only doing these things in the open, they’re licensing many (most? all?) of these projects so that Google isn't in total control.  A new language that could be used to rewrite/replace Apache, in combination with a new web protocol, may seem dubious, but once you consider their licensing it's not.

The comparison to Microsoft and other “monopolies” is easy to refute:  Microsoft participated in similar activities (IE, ActiveX, VB.Net, Windows Server, etc.), but did so either behind closed doors or with strict, proprietary licensing.  The fact that Google’s opening the door to Go in the same manner that PHP or Python does is an extremely crucial differentiation, and they’re very careful about doing this for all of their potentially gamechanging structure inventions.

Now if Google were to do all of this but not distribute source code, or sue a bunch of people for using it in a way they didn’t expect or don’t appreciate, that would be entirely different.  But they’re not, and they’re not likely to either – even if they don’t have control over creations like Go, they’ll be happy to see it used because, in the end, it benefits them too.

Most of Google's products can't be forced on people – they have to choose to use them, something that Microsoft’s products have never really needed, or chosen, to do.

[inspired by Rob Diana]

Expose pieces are irregular posts attempting to hold people and organizations accountable for their actions.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.