Twenty years ago, at the moment of its IPO announcement, the most powerful company in the world declared that “Don’t Be Evil” would be the orchestrating principle of its executive strategy. How did Google intend not to be evil? By doing “good things” for the world, its IPO document explained, “even if we forgo some short-term gains.” Eric Schmidt, its CEO at the time, had some private doubts: As he would later explain in an interview to NPR, “There’s no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” But Schmidt came to believe that the absence of an authoritative definition was in fact a virtue, since any employee could exercise a veto over a decision that was felt not to involve “doing good things.” It took ten years for the company’s executives to realize that the motto was a recipe for total corporate paralysis and quietly retire it.
