Fun fact: the umbrellas Google provides for around the campus say "Don't be evil" on them. I'm pretty sure that rather than reminding everyone that this is a Google motto (I don't recall having seen it anywhere else on campus) it's actually an admonition to the employee not to steal the umbrellas.
Logic:
That's neither
"Don't do evil"
nor
"Do good"
Neither of which google embraces.
@orangecoastcollegeprivacy Point being I don't think it ever occurs to most Googlers that anything the company is doing evil, because they don't set out with the conscious intent to do evil. Except almost no evil action comes from conscious evil intent. Which makes "Don't be evil" possibly the most worthless motto in history.
@orangecoastcollegeprivacy It should have been "We don't want to do evil but we're only human so please let us know if you think we're doing evil stuff and we will do our best to listen."
@orangecoastcollegeprivacy In my experience corporate mottos & mission statements can end up having the opposite effect because people don't bother asking whether the company is really living up to the motto, even assuming the motto is the right one to begin with. A friend who worked at Zynga once told me that any criticism of a proposed design would get shut down with handwaving about how they needed to move at "Zynga speed". And the Tao of Linden was absolutely terrible for Linden Lab IMO.