<story><title>Ex-Google workers sue company, saying it betrayed &apos;Don&apos;t Be Evil&apos; motto</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evil-lawsuit</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asdfasgasdgasdg</author><text>&amp;gt; The problem here is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; is so vague.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re going to have an extremely uphill battle to fight if this is the basis of their legal argument. No reasonable person could understand the phrase, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil,&amp;quot; to mean, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t do things that I personally consider evil.&amp;quot; For example, I very much doubt that a court is going to find that Customs and Border Protection is &amp;quot;evil,&amp;quot; and thus any actions the plaintiffs took against Google&amp;#x27;s dealings with CBP were contractually mandated by the employment agreement.&lt;p&gt;To the extent that this is a headache for Google at all, it will serve as a great example as to why legalese and corporate-speak is so common in the U.S. Google tried to have a motto that, while legally ambiguous, expressed a sentiment about how they wanted to treat their users and act in the marketplace. There will be different opinions about how well Google lives up to the motto, but certainly at the time it was coined, that was the idea behind it. And now they&amp;#x27;re getting sued, essentially frivolously, over the language. If it causes them a problem, it&amp;#x27;s a lesson to other companies: avoid mottos that are subject to creative and motivated interpretation during litigation. Or to put it another way, don&amp;#x27;t have mottos.</text></item><item><author>Laremere</author><text>It seems the title is implying that the people suing think Google had an obligation to not be evil because that was its motto.&lt;p&gt;Reading the article, the lawsuit is about something more reasonable:  They signed an employee code of conduct which included &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot;.  They organized a movement within Google in pursuit of contractually obligated motto, and believe they were fired for doing this organizing.&lt;p&gt;Say you were hired as security.  You signed a contract stating you wouldn&amp;#x27;t let anyone enter the building who doesn&amp;#x27;t have a valid employee id.  One day a VP forgets his ID at home, and puts you in a tough spot.  Fearing you&amp;#x27;d be fired because you violated your contract, you deny the VP access to the building.  The VP is mad, and gets revenge on you by getting you fired.  In this case, suing the company for following the rules it made you follow seems reasonable.&lt;p&gt;The problem here is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; is so vague.  I&amp;#x27;m unsure it will have enough standing to succeed, but it&amp;#x27;s not entirely unreasonable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chickenpotpie</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Contra_proferentem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Contra_proferentem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ambiguity in a contract benefits the party that did not draft it</text></comment>
<story><title>Ex-Google workers sue company, saying it betrayed &apos;Don&apos;t Be Evil&apos; motto</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evil-lawsuit</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asdfasgasdgasdg</author><text>&amp;gt; The problem here is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; is so vague.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re going to have an extremely uphill battle to fight if this is the basis of their legal argument. No reasonable person could understand the phrase, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil,&amp;quot; to mean, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t do things that I personally consider evil.&amp;quot; For example, I very much doubt that a court is going to find that Customs and Border Protection is &amp;quot;evil,&amp;quot; and thus any actions the plaintiffs took against Google&amp;#x27;s dealings with CBP were contractually mandated by the employment agreement.&lt;p&gt;To the extent that this is a headache for Google at all, it will serve as a great example as to why legalese and corporate-speak is so common in the U.S. Google tried to have a motto that, while legally ambiguous, expressed a sentiment about how they wanted to treat their users and act in the marketplace. There will be different opinions about how well Google lives up to the motto, but certainly at the time it was coined, that was the idea behind it. And now they&amp;#x27;re getting sued, essentially frivolously, over the language. If it causes them a problem, it&amp;#x27;s a lesson to other companies: avoid mottos that are subject to creative and motivated interpretation during litigation. Or to put it another way, don&amp;#x27;t have mottos.</text></item><item><author>Laremere</author><text>It seems the title is implying that the people suing think Google had an obligation to not be evil because that was its motto.&lt;p&gt;Reading the article, the lawsuit is about something more reasonable:  They signed an employee code of conduct which included &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot;.  They organized a movement within Google in pursuit of contractually obligated motto, and believe they were fired for doing this organizing.&lt;p&gt;Say you were hired as security.  You signed a contract stating you wouldn&amp;#x27;t let anyone enter the building who doesn&amp;#x27;t have a valid employee id.  One day a VP forgets his ID at home, and puts you in a tough spot.  Fearing you&amp;#x27;d be fired because you violated your contract, you deny the VP access to the building.  The VP is mad, and gets revenge on you by getting you fired.  In this case, suing the company for following the rules it made you follow seems reasonable.&lt;p&gt;The problem here is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil&amp;quot; is so vague.  I&amp;#x27;m unsure it will have enough standing to succeed, but it&amp;#x27;s not entirely unreasonable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>geofft</author><text>You can see the whole legal argument - it&amp;#x27;s linked from the first sentence of the article, and it quotes the relevant section of the employee code of conduct: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;21119310-google_complaint_filed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;21119310-google_comp...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;“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. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information. focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services we can. But it&amp;#x27;s also about doing the right thing more generally ~ following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That is pretty specific. You need to provide users unbiased access to information, focus on their needs, and give them the best products and services you can. You also need to follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.&lt;p&gt;The courts do in fact understand legally-binding terms to mean &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt;. (See also the fact that IBM&amp;#x27;s lawyers sought a specific exemption from the JSON license&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The Software shall be used for Good, and not Evil,&amp;quot; because they knew there was a chance the courts would find something they did &amp;quot;Evil,&amp;quot; because if it&amp;#x27;s in a contract, it means something.) So what do they mean?&lt;p&gt;Some of these clauses - &amp;quot;giving them the best products and services we can,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;acting honorably,&amp;quot; etc. - are a little squishy. But &amp;quot;providing our users unbiased access to information&amp;quot; is pretty clear-cut.&lt;p&gt;The plaintiffs organized against Dragonfly, a censored version of Google that would provide users biased access to information. IMO they&amp;#x27;ve got a pretty good case that the employee handbook, which they had to abide by to keep their job, told them to do that.</text></comment>