Maybe it’s time for Google to rethink its ‘Don’t be evil’ motto

In short, it started seriously messing with “true” search, the search that had been largely untainted; the search based on algorithms, not allegiances; the search we expect from Google.

I think most users would argue that this makes finding what you want harder, less diverse and more insulated. The experience feels suffocating to me, like I have to fight through Google+ results to see the “real” stuff.

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All work, but all play, tooAll work, but all play, too --The offices of Facebook and Google are more than your standard cubicle-filled corporate buildings.

Google search has, until now, represented the Internet giant’s biggest gift and most valuable contribution to the Web — a place to find things untouched (or at least mostly untouched) by greedy hands.

This week, Google announced another radical change to Google search — but this time on the back end. It said that beginning March 1, Google would begin integrating information about searches you run while signed into a Google account, including your Android phone, with data from 59 other Google products such as Gmail and YouTube. Google says there’s a way to turn off your search history — but you have to do it in at least three places. The only absolute way to prevent giving Google enough information to build a digital dossier of your life is to close your account.

I don’t think anyone in our industry would knock Google for continuing to build its business and make money. And yes, we could all benefit from acknowledging that our concepts of “good” and “evil” aren’t always clear. But explaining away Google’s changes as simply a matter of differing perspectives wouldn’t address the real problem.

The real problem is that Google’s search policy shift and the change in its privacy policies suggest a shift in core values at the company — values you didn’t need a road map to figure out a few years ago. Those were values that placed the user first and stood in stark contrast to monopolistic practices of companies like Microsoft in the 1990s.

They were Google Values, and they felt right. They felt good.

If Google can’t see how perverse some of its decisions look today by comparison, maybe it’s time to rethink the company motto.

Joshua Topolsky is the founding editor in chief of the Verge, a technology news Web site.

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