Debating Google's Evilness

In my previous post I used the binary 'Google is Evil', 'Google is Innocent' structure to represent the findings of Intelligence Squared U.S's Oxford Style Debate.

The statement in question was in fact: "Does Google Violate Its Corporate Motto 'Don't Be Evil'?"

The team tasked with proving that Google DOES violate the motto, dispensed with any real investigation of 'evilness', (thank Google), but rather, explored the term's meaning and held Google up to its values (the seven deadly sins.)

Within this context, Google was found lacking.

What's more, it was proven that Google failed to live up to its less biblical mission of organizing and rendering the world's information more accessible to you and me (and the Chinese?)

Tried and sentenced in a court of its own design.

This has a certain appealing symmetry to it, no?

An ammendement to my previous post: I posted pre-debate results.

The final results affirmed that Google does in fact violate its corporate motto, being a little evil every now and then. On those evil scales.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, the associate professor at the University of Virginia, alerted me to this in a comment posted on my blog yesterday:

"The question in our debate was not whether Google is evil. Of course it is not. The question is whether Google violates its motto.

My approach was to show that it literally violates a canon of evil: the Seven Deadly Sins. As such -- and like every other company in the world -- it cannot take its own motto seriously.

The Seven Deadly sins are silly. The motto is silly. And no company should expect itself to follow such a motto.

Our side offered ample evidence of Google compromising its principles in the course of living up to its real mission statement: To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.

That's all we had to do to win the debate. That's how and why we did win.

The score you listed was the preliminary result -- before the debate happened.

The result after the debate was 47 for the resolution, 47 percent against, and six percent undecided."

Siva Vaidhyanathan.