The "Don't be evil" lawsuit
The “Don’t be evil” lawsuit
“Don’t be evil” is Google’s former motto, and a phrase used in Google’s corporate code of conduct. Following Google’s corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took “Do the right thing” as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct. The original motto was retained in Google’s code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct’s preface and retained in its last sentence.
Lawsuit
On 29 November 2021, 3 former Google employees filed a lawsuit alleging that Google’s motto “Don’t be evil” amounts to a contractual obligation that the tech giant violated, that Google broke their own moral code by firing them as retaliation for their efforts against “evil”, in what the trio thought were in accordance with the principle, in drawing attention to and organizing employees against controversial projects, such as work for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during the Trump administration which, as they claimed, amounted to “doing evil”, and as such deserve monetary damages.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Laurie Burgess, says Google employees can be fired for not abiding by the motto.
“There are all sorts of contract terms that a jury is required to interpret: ‘don’t be evil’ is not so ‘out there’ as to be unenforceable”. “Since Google’s contract tells employees that they can be fired for failing to abide by the motto, ‘don’t be evil,’ it must have meaning.” - plaintiffs’ lawyer, Laurie Burgess
The trio circulated a petition calling on Google to publicly commit to not working with the CBP. The three workers, along with a fourth, were later fired, in 2019, on a denied accusation, of “clear and repeated violations” of the company’s data security policies.
The National Labor Relations Board wrote, in May 2021, that Google “arguably violated” federal labor law by “unlawfully discharging” the workers.
The trio condemned Google for their behavior…
“Google realized that ‘don’t be evil’ was both costing it money and driving workers to organize”. “Rather than admit that their stance had changed and lose the accompanying benefits to the company image, Google fired employees who were living the motto.” - the fired employees said in a statement in 2021.
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