"Don't Be Evil"--Anyone Over At Der Google Remember That One?

At one time, the people running Google wanted a folksy, friendly, homey appearnace. They wanted to be the sort of smiley faces you might like to see first thing in the morning.

So they hit upon what is probably the best, yet least-remembered slogan in corporate history. Mission statement and ethical posture all in one:

"Don't be evil."

Then, as we all know, came China. Faced with a choice between profit and principle, Der Googlag decided ...

"Don't be evil ... mostly."

Now that they own 90% of the intertubes, Der Gougel is starting to behave like any other corp. Witness now the sight modification they've made to Blogger.

In the blogosphere, connections are important, the free flow of information and opinion is what the damn thing is based on. You go to someone's blog, read it, and drop an well-informed and incisive comment on their comment thread. They follow you to your blog and, in their turn, rant incoherently on yours.

At least until now. Presumably as some sort of "public service" similar to the "public service" they're performing in China, and for the same rea$on, they've decided to screw with Blogger.

Now non-Blogger bloggers can't get a formatted link in their comments. So rather than simply post and go, they have to take the laborious few seconds to format it themselves. Okay, the Srebenica Massacre it ain't. But it IS a profit-motivated, corporate-driven act of restriction designed to force everyone to get a Google account. And no matter what they slogan at us, yes, it's evil.

It happens I'd had a Gmail account before Blogger forced everyone to "New Blogger" (read: "Der Göoglebloggenschrieber". But I didn't like that move either.

("Don't be evil.")

Now my friends can't leave a link to their blogs, presumably because poor old Google would lose so much traffic from the ten or twelve hits a day that go from my blog to non-Göogleanfangscribbleren blogs.

Wordpress is looking better all the time. But of course it's pretty difficult to move a blog, especially one with eight hundred or so posts, and especially from Blogger. One might almost think they'd tried to make sure it stays that way.

In Orwell's Animal Farm, the phrase was "All Animals Are Equal."

Google is falling victim to its own success. The things that made them the leading internet corp are falling away, and they've become another horizon-blocking monolith.

I tried to contact Der Google about this issue. Anyone know of an email address that can penetrate the indifference? Try finding one. I had it in mind to submit a new slogan for Blogger as run by Google:


"All bloggers are equal, but some are less equal than others."