Don't be evil
Don't be evil
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Don't be evil

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Don't be evil

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Don't be evil

"Don't be evil" is Google's former motto, and a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct.

One of Google's early uses of the motto was in the prospectus for its 2004 IPO. In 2015, following Google's corporate restructuring as a subsidiary of the conglomerate Alphabet Inc., Google's code of conduct continued to use its original motto, while Alphabet's code of conduct used the motto "Do the right thing". In 2018, Google removed its original motto from the preface of its code of conduct but retained it in the last sentence.

The motto was first suggested either by Google employee Paul Buchheit at a meeting about corporate values that took place either in early 2000 or 2001 or, according to another account, by Google engineer Amit Patel in 1999. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, 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, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent".

While the official corporate philosophy of Google does not contain the words "Don't be evil", they were included in the prospectus (on Form S-1) of Google's 2004 IPO (a letter from Google's founders, later called the "'Don't Be Evil' manifesto"): "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains." The motto is sometimes incorrectly stated as Do no evil.

By early 2018, the motto was still cited in the preface to Google's Code of Conduct:

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that...

The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put "Don't be evil" into practice...

Between 21 April and 4 May 2018, Google removed the motto from the preface, leaving a mention in the final line: "And remember... don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!"

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