From the “Don’t Be Evil” Department

As we all know, Google’s unofficial motto is “Don’t be evil”. I’m a huge fan of the ideals behind the statement, but I’m also a huge cynic. IMHO, by going public, Google essentially changed the motto to “Let’s not be poor.” Not that all the hardworking Googlers don’t deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.

Since they went public, the motto has come under fire, and as they grow into a behemoth brand, it’s even more fun to poke snarky fun at their idealistic motto. To their credit, they have done more than most companies to stay on the not evil side of the karmic equation.

Case in point, Google Gears. Office 2.0 provider Zoho is now using Gears, whose source code is open, to allow the users of its Writer application to view documents offline. Decent stuff, see screencast here and coverage here and here.

In the current release, the offline Writer only allows users to view documents, but Zoho says edit capabilities are coming soon. Um, sure. Why is this useful if I can’t edit the document? That’s a scoping meeting I’d like to have attended. I guess the proof of concept was more important than the most useful feature.

But I digress. This post is about Google. Larry Dignan has a post about the cozy relationship between Yahoo and Hadoop, an open source project using the same techniques Google does to “manage the massive data processing challenges associated with indexing the Web”.

Google has not shared the code for these techniques, but they have published academic papers on the features into the wild.

So what? If I’m a GOOG shareholder, I’m wondering why Google: a) isn’t protecting its core IP from Yahoo and everyone else, even at the risk of a little less ego-stroking and b) is allowing a competitor to Google Docs & Spreadsheets to launch an offline version first, using Google’s technology.

Maybe there’s a master plan. I’ve been waiting for GDS to have offline capabilities with Gears, and maybe that’s why Zoho rushed a marginal feature to market. Still they seem pretty cavalier with product strategy. Maybe Google is competing on too many fronts, or maybe I’m just missing why protecting IP is evil. I know, just because they don’t do something doesn’t mean it’s evil. I suppose the open nature of Google allows them to retain the really smart people who make the company tick. Still, would it be that bad to keep some of the good stuff for yourself.

Here’s the point: it’s tough to stay not evil when you work for shareholders who expect you to make them money, especially if your stock has been doing this for the past month.