“Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting.

Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out,” adding that the slogan was “also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.”

Enough said.

On one hand, I think that if you pick a common word as the name of your product, you should expect that other people are going to do the same. Seriously…the word ‘Go’? I don’t care if you add an exclamation point at the end or not, it’s just not a good choice. Therefore, if someone uses your name, get over it; you should have picked a better name for your brand.

On the other hand, they should change it because it is such a poor choice. SEO reasons are a valid point; unless Google forces their product to the top (and I assume they will) there is no reason for it to show up in results any time soon. And even if they do that, will I really want to see a coding language when I look up an action verb?

I do think Google’s choice will speak more about their character as a corporate entity than anything else. It IS the right thing to do (for numerous reasons).

If they DON’T do it…what does that say about them?

cheers,
michael