they also used to have a slogan "don't be evil"

Its easy and fun to dunk on them. And rightfully so. But I've never been genuinely tempted by tens of millions of dollars before. I can't imagine it would just be "one big moment", more like slowly boiling a frog.

I will always hate the prequels for this. George needed help but was too proud to ask. We couldve seen how strong the pull of the dark side could be.

And decades later they're multibillionaires who hold all the traits of multibillionaires. They're into transhumanism, the singularity, effective altruism, microdosing, owning your own private yachts, planes, and islands, donating to conservative candidates, and moving their assets to avoid paying taxes. Complete scum. Utopia isn't going to happen when all your AI shit is making creative people miserable.

Study math at university, start a search engine company using your sick math skillz, become the evil businessman you presumably hated when you started out, and then use your wealth to fund AI that will make nobody want to study math at university. Pulling up the ladder. What a world.

Their later solution to this problem is interesting: for a long time the search and ad teams were entirely separate. The search team had one mission and that was to make Google search as good as possible. Selling ads and making money was someone else's task. The old reasoning of "Make a really good product and then the profit will follow". This is how Google search was able to outcompete all it's competitors.

Then 2019 rolled around, the Google Ads team failed to meet objectives, and they blamed Google search for their failure. Google's solution was to make search worse, reduce the visual difference between ads and results, and eventually put the ads guy officially in charge of search. The goal of Google search had changed from making the best search engine possible to optimizing ad views and clicks. This is one of the best documented stories of enshittification imo.

Good reads about this:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
https://codingwithcody.com/2025/10/search-is-dead-google-killed-it/

I'll ask the shareholders, that's a good trick!

Disney+ changes subscriber agreement to allow ads on every plan

https://feddit.org/post/35666466

If you can't opt out of ads then they are not only there to sell more products.

Brin now actively interfering with elections to avoid being taxed. You are the face of evil, Sergie.

Some alternatives:

• Duckduckgo (Bing with privacy)
• Qwant (Bing with privacy, but building their own index)
• Mojeek (pet favorite of the privacy community but small index, search often unsatisfying for me)
• Kagi (apparently really good but paid)

it's funny that they talk about ads hurting search results because they literally became an advertising company that does shitty search on the side.

Bros saw those profits and changed their tune.

its kinda funny in hindsight.

I'm old enough to remember them having "don't be evil" written in big letters on their campus...

Then they got money. That changed everthing.