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‘Don’t be evil’: Google’s iconic mantra comes into question at labor trial

The ethos has set Google apart from other companies for decades. It’s under the spotlight again.

Last month, software engineer Kyle Dhillon said during a labor board trial that «Don’t be evil,» Google’s famous corporate mantra, had lured him to the tech giant five years ago.

The motto appealed to the Princeton grad because it showed Google was aware of its own power. It underscored, Dhillon said, the delicate work it takes to keep a big company like Google honest.

«Recognizing ‘Don’t be evil’ as one of its core values shows that it’s aware it’s possible for us to become evil,» Dhillon told a National Labor Relations Board attorney in response to a question about whether the motto played a role in his decision to join the search giant. «And it would be quite natural, in fact.»

The brief exhortation, which Google has deemphasized in recent years, is now a focal point in an NLRB complaint against the company that alleges the tech giant wrongly fired five employees for their labor activism. The employees had protested actions by Google, including its hiring of a consultancy with a history of anti-union efforts and its work with US Customs and Border Protection. Dhillon isn’t one of the fired employees, but he received a final warning from the company that the NLRB contends was illegal.

By untangling Google’s labor policies, the proceedings have shined a light on the tech giant’s famous work culture, which in turn has prompted a close look at Google’s iconic mantra. The result has been a public rumination on the company’s North Star set against the backdrop of a high-profile legal forum.

The tech giant has denied wrongdoing. The trial, which began on Aug. 23, is ongoing. One of the fired employees, Laurence Berland, has privately settled with the company.

Google isn’t alone in adopting an unorthodox mantra. Apple’s grammatically distinctive «Think different» advertising campaign was eventually embraced as a de facto corporate motto. Facebook’s former motto was «Move fast and break things,» an expression evoking permission — celebration even — of recklessness. Still, Google’s corporate motto has always been an outlier. It’s simultaneously tongue in cheek, befitting a company that pioneered freewheeling workplace culture with free food and slides in lobbies, yet powerfully solemn.

And so with it came a higher standard, said Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

«It raised employee expectations that the company would be different,» Raicu said. «It invited a certain kind of employee to join.»

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘A jab at other companies’

Like any piece of great folklore, differing accounts of who coined «Don’t be evil» are told. But credit is usually given to Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel, two early Google employees. Buchheit, who created Gmail, has said he came up with the slogan during a meeting in early 2000 to define company values.

«I was sitting there trying to think of something that would be really different and not one of these usual ‘Strive for excellence’ type of statements,» Buchheit said in 2007. «It’s 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.»

After the meeting, Patel began writing the phrase on whiteboards around Google’s Mountain View, California, campus, trying to make the slogan stick. It did. The phrase eventually made it into Google’s code of conduct. It’s now one of the best-known corporate slogans in the world.

Buchheit and Patel didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Since its inception, the motto has expanded from a guiding principle for product development and policies to a rallying cry for Google’s critics, some of the toughest being the company’s own workers. Employees say the mantra has served as the linchpin for some of the workforce’s most notable protests. That includes activism regarding now-shuttered plans for a censored Chinese search product, a contract with the Pentagon for tech that could improve the accuracy of drone strikes, and the company’s handling of sexual misconduct claims directed at senior executives. At some demonstrations, workers have held up signs that say «Don’t be evil.»

As Google has grown bigger and increasingly steeped in controversy, its dedication to the mantra has repeatedly come under question. Last week, The New York Times and The Guardian reported that Google knowingly underpaid temp workers, but decided not to fully correct the situation because it feared negative press attention. In response, Google workers wrote an open letter to leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding the company fork over the $100 million in back pay it allegedly owes its temps.

«For much of Google’s workforce, ‘Don’t be evil’ is a smokescreen,» the letter says. «It’s a way to reap the financial rewards of unquestioning public faith, by assuring investors, users and government entities that Google is trustworthy and friendly — while successfully underpaying and mistreating the majority of their workers.»

‘It’s not enough not to be evil’

In 2004, as Google prepared to go public, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin expounded on the motto in an interview with Playboy. The interview is excerpted in Google’s prospectus filing.

Brin: As for «Don’t be evil,» we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good—always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, «Don’t be evil» seems the easiest way to summarize it.

Page: Apparently people like it better than «Be good.»

Brin: It’s not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good.

That attitude still resonates with Google’s rank and file today. At the labor board trial, Sophie Waldman, one of the employees who was allegedly wrongfully terminated, said it’s what attracted her to the company in the first place. «That was an important factor,» Waldman testified. «I’ve always cared a lot about making sure my work has a positive, or at the very worst, neutral impact on the world.»

Waldman said she kept the phrase in mind as she went on with her everyday work of trying to improve search results. Other employees also talked about the practical applications of the mantra, as opposed to just a pie-in-the-sky ideal.

«It made it sound like the company had somewhat of a conscience,» said Eddie Gryster, a Google software engineer. «It meant to me that at the time Google was basically saying, ‘Hey, that is good business for us to not be evil,’ and to do the right thing helps us maintain trust with users.»

Some people worry that Google, with its trillion-dollar valuation and headcount of more than 135,000 full-time employees, is moving away from that ethos. In 2015, after Page and Brin created Alphabet, a holding company for Google, the phrase was moved from the beginning of Google’s code of conduct to the end of it. Critics saw it as a demotion of the principle, an afterthought in the last sentence of a 6,500-word document. «And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!» the guidelines say.

The broader code of conduct for Alphabet makes no mention of the phrase.

The cynical view is that such a mantra is outdated in modern Silicon Valley, as the industry struggles to contain disinformation, election interference and other abuses. Still, Google employees have taken «Don’t be evil» to heart, as well as the last two words of the revised code of conduct: speak up. They did so by engaging in legally protected actions, the NLRB argues.

So, employees say, the mantra is at the core of why Google is on trial in the first place.

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Technologies

Can Chemicals Turn My Orange iPhone 17 Pink? Here’s What I Found Out

There are reports that some cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro handsets are turning pink. I threw chemicals at my iPhone to see what would happen.

A recent Reddit thread suggests that it’s possible for a cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro to turn vibrant pink. As PCMag’s Eric Zeman noted, it’s likely that the phone has been discolored by cleaning substances that affected the finish, turning it from vibrant orange to a wild hot pink. Sure, this might technically be a fault, but in all honesty I love pink phones and the idea of a hot pink iPhone 17 Pro filled me with joy. So I wanted to see if I could test the theory and see just what color-changing effects various household cleaners might have on my phone.

It’s important to note here that the iPhone 17 Pro I used was bought by CNET for the purposes of testing. Had I paid over $1,000 of my own money I wouldn’t be so reckless in smearing it with chemicals that could potentially irreparably harm it. And you shouldn’t either. If you need to clean your phone, do it safely. Disclaimer aside, let’s dive in.

The chemicals

I bought two chemicals to test this out. Zeman explains that it may be oxidation that caused the color to change and that hydrogen peroxide could do this. I couldn’t find this over the counter in the UK, so I instead bought an «oxy-active» stain remover spray that, among other things, contains «oxygen-based bleaching agents» which sounded ideal. Apple also clearly states «don’t use products containing bleach or hydrogen peroxide» on its support page so, naturally, I bought some thick bleach too.

Oxy application

I started by spraying the oxy cleaner on a microfiber cloth until it was noticeably wet from the liquid and then liberally applied this all over the rear of the iPhone. The Reddit user with the affected phone showed that it only affected the metal parts, not the glass back panel, so I made sure to focus my attention on the sides and camera bar. 

With the phone well and truly doused in chemicals that have no business being anywhere near a phone, I left it to sit and think about what it had done for 30 minutes — after which time I wiped it dry and took a close inspection. Disappointingly, my phone was still factory orange, rather than «what the hell have you done to your phone» pink. Time to move on.

Bleach blast

I opened the bleach and trying hard not to think about my days as a middle school cleaner, applied a liberal blob of the stuff to a cloth and smeared it over the defenceless phone, concentrating again on the metal areas. I definitely should have worn protective gloves for all of this so please make sure you take better care of yourself than I do if you do anything with bleach. 

Again, I gave it a 30-minute settling in period before cleaning it off and inspecting the results. 

The phone remained as orange as ever, looking as box fresh as it was the day before when it was, indeed, box fresh. The orange color hadn’t changed and now almost 24 hours later there’s still no sign of discoloration of any kind. 

Is the pink iPhone 17 real?

I can’t say with any certainty whether the Reddit user’s images of a pink iPhone 17 Pro are real or not. The cuddly human side of me wants to take them at their word, while the journalist in me is sceptical. What I can say with certainty is that putting your orange iPhone into close contact with household cleaning products isn’t going to win you a funky, ultra-rare pink hue that you could sell on eBay for a small fortune. 

It’s possible that using pure peroxide could be the thing that does it, but to be honest, if you’re going out of your way to throw industrial-grade chemicals at your phone then you may as well just directly try and dye it. My goal here was to see how susceptible the orange model is to everyday household cleaners such as kitchen cleaner or bathroom bleach — the sort of things it might naturally come into contact with in routine use. And what I’ve found is that, no, it won’t ruin the nice orange color. But it’s probably still not good for your phone. 

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My Teen Loves Her Apple AirPods Pro 2 and You Will Too With This $100 Off Deal for Black Friday

Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 have everything you could want from a pair of wireless earbuds, plus a steep discount.

Black Friday deals: The Apple AirPods Pro 2 are some of the best personal audio gear on the market, even if they aren’t the latest model anymore. Sure, Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 are the newest earbuds in the lineup but the AirPods Pro 2 are still an excellent pick for most people.

They’re an even better buy this week during early Black Friday sales when you can get your hands on a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2 at a discount. Right now, Walmart is shaving a massive $100 off the AirPods Pro 2, dropping the cost to $139. That’s one of the lowest prices we’ve seen — but we doubt this deal will stick around for long.

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My 13-year-old daughter loves her music and her privacy, and for years she has wanted a pair of AirPods. They’re not cheap so I’ve only been getting her more budget options, like the Amazon Echo Buds, as a result. These kept seemingly disappearing, though, so I finally ponied up for the AirPods Pro 2.

I picked them up during last year’s sales, and they were definitely well-received. She’s happy, she uses them every day, and she hasn’t lost them yet. The AirPods Pro 2 are currently on sale at Walmart for $139, a nice price for a high-quality pair like these, and one of the lowest we’ve seen.

What about the AirPods Pro 3?

The AirPods Pro 3 weren’t available at the time I bought the AirPods Pro 2, but they were rumored, and I didn’t wait to see what they offered. As CNET’s resident headphone expert, David Carnoy summarized in his AirPods Pro 3 and Pro 3 comparison, the newer model is «significantly improved in the four most important areas: fit, sound quality, noise cancellation and battery life.» They also have heart-rate monitoring, like the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2.

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While these are undoubtedly all important things, a lot of people aren’t going to notice the differences or make the most of the new features. With the AirPods Pro 3 being newer, they’re on a smaller sale and are currently available at Amazon for $220, which is $30 off the list price.

Why I didn’t get the AirPods 4 instead

Why did I choose AirPods Pro 2 instead of the AirPods 4 with ANC? First, as I mentioned in another article about a different pair of earbuds I bought, I think sealed, in-ear buds are better than open-design models like the AirPods 4. The seal creates another layer of noise isolation and contributes to superior sound quality, and if you want to pay attention to the world you can always engage ambient sound mode, which Apple calls transparency mode. 

Also a factor was that, at the time, Carnoy considered the Pro 2 the best Apple noise-canceling wireless earbuds: «While we’re quite impressed with those new models — and with the AirPods 4 ANC in particular — the AirPods Pro 2 remain arguably the best Apple AirPods you can buy if you don’t mind having silicone ear tips jammed in your ears,» he said.

My daughter uses earplugs all the time to help her sleep, so she definitely qualifies as somebody who’s comfortable stuffing things in her ears. Like her fingers, when I start using words like «sigma,» «skibidi» and «relatable» to try to relate to her.

I asked Carnoy about the Pro 2s potentially not fitting in her kid-size ears and he reassured me that the range of eartips that come with the Pro 2s «now include XS, so they should fit.» 

Do AirPods make a great gift?

It took me years to finally understand, but yes, for someone looking for wireless earbuds, AirPods — especially the Apple AirPods Pro 2 — make the perfect gift, regardless of whether you’re a teenage girl. 

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If You’re Flying for the Holidays, This Bluetooth Dongle Transforms In-Flight Movies, and It’s 35% Off for Black Friday

Watch airplane movies just like you would at home with this game-changing device.

Air travel for the holidays can be stressful, especially when winter weather or flight delays force a change of plans, but one perk of flying still remains — watching new-release movies. However, in-flight entertainment on most airlines usually requires a wired set of earbuds. (And the ones the airline hands out are so bad they may as well not even be connected.) 

I’d far prefer to use my wireless, noise-canceling AirPods Pro, but they connect only via Bluetooth. There’s a simple tech solution that makes viewing movies on the plane feel more like watching them on your couch.

The AirFly is a simple Bluetooth dongle that allows me to connect my wireless earbuds directly to the airplane’s entertainment system, eliminating the need for adapters or wired workarounds. 

It’s become a must-pack item in my travel bag. Since I started using it, I’ve stopped dreading in-flight audio and finally get to enjoy movies on the plane. If you fly often, this little gadget could completely change how you travel. And the base level AirFly SE is 35% off for Black Friday at Amazon.

The AirFly Pro lets me enjoy in-flight entertainment

The AirFly Pro from Twelve South is a minimally designed dongle that allows me to connect to the 3.5mm headphone jack in my airplane seat, enabling me to listen to in-flight entertainment on my noise-canceling earbuds.

All I have to do is pair the AirFly with the Bluetooth headphones I’m using, such as my AirPods Pro, plug the AirFly into the display in front of me, and I’m all set. I don’t even need to use my phone to connect the two devices.

There are several versions of the AirFly: the AirFly SE, which is currently on sale for $26 on Amazon and connects to just one set of headphones, the AirFly Pro at $55, the Pro V2 at $60 and the Pro 2 Deluxe at $70, which comes with an international headphone adapter and a suede travel case.

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I use the AirFly Pro, which has been a game-changer for me on flights. I’ve never had to worry about battery life since the AirFly Pro lasts for over 25 hours and can be fully charged in just three hours. I can also pair two separate pairs of headphones to a single AirFly Pro, in case I’m with someone else on a flight and want to watch the same movie or show. 

And if that’s not enough, the AirFly Pro also doubles as an audio transmitter, allowing me to turn any speaker with a headphone jack, such as my old car stereo, into a Bluetooth speaker.

The AirFly Pro makes a great gift for any traveler

The AirFly Pro is the perfect present to give to someone who’s planning to travel this year. Besides my Anker MagSafe battery pack, the AirFly Pro has become my most treasured travel accessory when I fly, which is why I consider it one of those can’t-go-wrong gifts. 

For more travel gear, here are our favorite tech essentials to travel with and our favorite travel pillows.

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