[danharaj]

I think it feels different, at least to me, because "don't be evil" doesn't signal any value about how I would be treated if I worked at Google. We often evaluate such value statements by empathizing with the people affected. Everyone here wants to be evaluated on their merit. Everyone thinks they're meritorious.

So it's easy to see opposition to the word "meritocracy" and, putting oneself in the shoes of a member of the Mozilla org, feeling mistreated. On the other hand removing "don't be evil" doesn't feel like Google is going to start mistreating people I empathize with^.

^ I feel that way for different reasons :^)