Don’t Be Evil

I’m reading a wonderful book by Ken Auletta called “Googled, The End of the World as We Know It”, a history of the tech giant Google.

The message from Google is pretty simple, so I’ll be brief: The company’s founders, 2 Stanford PHD candidates, decided to index the web and make the list available to users for free. We take Google Search for granted today, but search, as done by companies like Alta Vista was a commercial venture, your search results reflected which companies paid the highest to show up. Google bucked the system by placing the customer first, by “giving away” their service.

Google, in fact, considers themselves to be on a mission to open the world of content up to everyone, their internal motto, “Don’t be evil” is a comment on their view of corporate America, and more specifically, Microsoft. The google web page doesn’t sell product, has minimal graphics and is designed to get you where you need to go as quickly as possible. Advertising, in general, is considered evil by Googlites because it tricks you into buying things by diverting you from the content you wanted to use (a TV show, a magazine article, a newspaper ad).

Google’s decision to give the clients what they want has paid off, after several years indexing the web and providing free search they figured out how to make money (pay per click advertising, etc.)  and they are expected to be the world’s largest media company in a matter of time.

For me, as we start this new business year today, I’m going to take Google’s message to heart, I’m going to remember that if you take care of your customers and provide something excellent, the money will follow.