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Earlier in dotcoms, I dug up his old email address this way, for a reason that seemed important at the time... Some Google megacorp faceless bureaucracy combat drones (that was their initial approach) were trying to force me to give up a domain name, and implying they would take legal action and "prevail". I couldn't afford a lawyer, and I had better things to do with my time, but... I wasn't yet using the domain name, and probably would've let it expire if they'd never contacted me, but their heavy-handedness raised a moral concern. At the time, Google was considered good, and clearly it was very important to humanity at the time that Google be good and stay good. The whole "don't be evil" seemed to come from recognizing that Google would likely be very powerful (this was pretty clear earlier, as soon as you used their prototype, and realized it was not only better than everything else, but that they were more competent than almost all other dotcommers). They were declaring upfront that they took the responsibility seriously, and wouldn't abuse their position. And there was some early evidence that they believed in that (such as in objectivity of rankings, and being very clear about what was sponsored messages and not). The domain name in question had been intended for a social commentary parody, of some social media manipulation behavior that had just started to emerge on a lesser Google property. I told the threatening lawyer-types that. I also pointed out that the domain name obviously would never be mistaken for a Google brand, and that I'm pretty sure that the bit of intentional similarity to one of their brands would be considered protected use in the US. When they still wouldn't back off -- and since I couldn't afford a lawyer to argue the points, but I was concerned -- I looked for the founders' old email addresses, and used Brin's (IIRC) to initiate a domain name transfer to him. Then I told the lawyer-types (and a PR contact there) something like, if they wanted the domain name, they'd have to talk to him about it, and maybe have a "don't be evil" discussion. IIRC, they said they'd wait for the domain to expire. |