Google Ice Cream; Can Google Be Trusted?

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .
“Don't Be Evil?” video - beta version
Sep 1, 2010
ConsumerWatchdog

This ad is from a non-profit organization in USA, called Consumer Watchdog. It's home page is at www.consumerwatchdog.org

This video, can be seen at their site at: insidegoogle.com.

I'm a programer in web dev industry. I've been watching google grow up, so to speak, from the very early days when google started in 1998, and over the past 10+ years, from one single web search product to tens of services ( gmail, orkut (social networking), google news, blogger, google groups (online forum), Google Video and YouTube, google sites and google doc, picasa (image hosting), gTalk (IM, chat), adSense and AdWords, Google webmaster tools and Google Analytics, Google Code (code hosting), Google Chrome (browser), … ). Today, i use almost all of them, gradually over the years.

I'm quite picky and sensitive about which company's products and services i choose, and i've followed closely about Google's practices and news. I must say, Google is pretty safe, their products are usually much better than competitors, and Google is more trust-worthy than competitors, all things considered.

When you attack companies, you really need to think about, are you attacking them just because they are big and successful? Or are you attacking them because some specific issues? I think it is true that any company, however ethical, when becoming one of the biggest in the industry, gets attacked. Or, in other words, any ethical company, when you are so successful to become number 1, you get attached the “monopoly” label, and you became the target of fear and hate.

It was IBM, then it was Microsoft, now, it's Google's turn. (See: On Microsoft Hatred.)

I'm sure Google has some issues here and there, but we need to look at the big picture, not grabbing a pigtail and blame. Whether Google is trust-worthy tomorrow, we'll have to see.

See also: Google: DON'T BE EVIL vs DON'T DO EVIL.

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