|
|
|
|
|
|
by 659087
3216 days ago
|
|
|
> Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. Google proved that all you need is a colorful logo and a stupid catch phrase ("Don't be evil") to get people to treat you as an infallible, altruistic entity - regardless of the fact that your actions tell a completely different story. Like Apple, Google has become a religion for their fans. As with all religions, inconvenient facts are dutifully ignored by members of the Holy Order of Goog. I find the worship of corporations even more difficult to grasp than Scientology. |
|
|
I don't think the logo or catch-phrase have much to do with it. Google's search engine was orders of magnitude better than anything else when it came out (that's how they won the market) and they've used their dominance of the web to improve their search to the point where the search box can read your mind. That is why people treat them as good -- because "morally good" and "usefully good" are difficult to separate.
You see Apple users (and maybe Linux users?) as religious zealots and assume they must have been tricked by a pretty logo or some CS hazing ritual. What's actually going on is that they're reacting to one very positive experience (maybe along some dimension that you don't care about) and following the human inclination to extrapolate that experience to the whole product/company.