The Myths of Security

Chapter 7. Google Is Evil

To most engineers, Google is this wonderful playground where you get to go work on cool projects that people might actually use, and work on whatever project tickles your fancy one day a week (they call this “20% time”). Meanwhile, Google gives you free food and drink, has massages available in the office, provides lots of games, and generally encourages creativity and fun.

If you search for the phrase, “I love Google,” (in quotes) you will get about 123,000 results (searching through Google, of course). I think that’s pretty impressive—searching for “I love Microsoft” turns up only about 63,000 results, “I love Zac Efron” (star of the High School Musical franchise) turns up a mere 33,500, and “I love John Viega” returns no hits whatsoever.

Google may not love me, but I do love Google, and use its offerings extensively. Still, I often find myself agreeing with the approximately 43,200 web pages that state, “Google is evil,” despite Google’s corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.”

I don’t think any particular individuals working for the company are evil (although there are probably a few). But if you look at what Google does, the net result isn’t always good for the end user. It may be good for Google’s shareholders, and thus the right thing for the company to do, but it’s not the right thing for the rest of the world. While there are lots of things that make Google evil, I’m going to focus on why Google is actively making the world a less safe place.

And before I ...