BuzzMachine

Tuesday night, I’m joining in an NPR Intelligence Squared debate - Oxford format - on the motion, Google violates its “don’t be evil” motto. I’m speaking against - surprise, surprise. Esther Dyson and and Jim Harper of CATO are on my side; on the other are Siva Vaidhyanathan of the University of Virginia (who’s also writing a book on Google), Randal C. Picker of the University of Chicago, and Harry Lewis of Harvard. Gulp. (The debate will be aired later. They’re charging $40 for tickets to the live event.)

Here are draft notes on my opening. I’m writing it out but will treat this more as an outline. As always, I would be grateful for your thoughts.

My opponents have a high bar to get over. Google should be presumed virtuous until proven evil. Just because it could be evil does not mean it is. Just being big and powerful does not make it evil. In this country, we tend to value success until one becomes too successful, and then we become suspicious. How much success is too much? That is our problem, not Google’s. No, my opponents must bring the evidence of Google’s misdeeds to prove their case. I don’t envy them.

I grant that Google could be better.

* In China and in other nations where free speech is attacked, Google should use its power and influence - which are greater than even it seems to know - to refuse to issue censored search results. I wonder whether the risk of life without Google could lead to revolution. But in its defense, Google argues that a hampered internet is better for the Chinese than no internet at all.

* I also wish that Google were more transparent about the business arrangement in its ad networks. Google demands transparency from the rest of us - if we want Googlejuice - but it is too often opaque itself. But opaqueness has long been standard procedure in business.

Evil? No.

Leavening the impression of - or fear of - evil is Google’s virtue. Google does good. Our world is a better place because of Google. Consider:

* Google has opened up the world’s digital knowledge to everyone. We can answer any question, satisfy any curiosity, fix any error of fact in the blink of an eye. I wanted to know just how fast that is, so I asked Google how fast an eye blinks and in .3 seconds it told me that a blink takes .3 seconds.

* Google respects the wisdom of the crowd - that is the essence of the PageRank that determines which search results are most relevant. Google also enables us to recapture our wisdom, as it does with its analysis of flu trends based on our searches for related words.

* Google connects people. Young people today will never lose touch and I hope that will lead to better friendships and better behavior.

* Google’s ads are helping to support the creation of the next generation of content. I made $4,500 in Google ads on my blog, Buzzmachine, last year. Granted, I shouldn’t have quit my day job but Google made my blog profitable.

* Edward Roussel, digital head of the Telegraph in London, has argued that declining newspapers should consider handing over the work of technology, distribution, and ad sales to Google so they could become efficient and profitable and do what they do best: journalism.

* Google created platforms on which others can create products, companies, jobs, value, and wealth. About.com, Platial.com, Outside.in, EveryBlock.com exist only because Google made them possible. With Google’s ads, maps, hosting, services, and promotion, new creations bloom.

* Google shows us the way to a new economy that will be built out of the wreckage of the financial crisis. No longer will companies grow to critical mass by borrowing huge amounts of capital to make huge acquisitions. In the Google age, they will grow by creating networks on platforms. We have much to learn from Google’s ways.

One might say that its vow not to do evil is the height of hubris. Google is undeniably arrogant. But its executives say the evil motto is valuable inside the company because it allows any employee to question any decision. It’s not a bad rule. Indeed, I wish Google’s covenant had been chiseled over many a door on Wall Street. If only, in the poisoned process that led to the financial crisis, enough people had asked whether seeking and issuing toxic mortgages and making and selling toxic assets were evil—instead of someone else’s problem—I wonder whether we’d have reached this nadir.

As we try to understand and navigate a new world built on links, connectedness, networks, openness, transparency, publicness, trust, generosity, efficiency, niches, platforms, speed, and abundance, we would do well to ask ourselves, what would Google do? Google is not evil. Google is an example to us all.

No amount of PR and no number of company blogs can make a bad company look good — or smart. Wal-Mart is the poster pig for that lipstick. Again and again, they prove themselves to be mean, greedy, and stupid. Again and again, they and their PR people are forced to apologize. And it’s clear: They never learn. The culture remains venal. Management remains blind to the fact that their moral myopia is bad for the brand and bad for business. Even the PR company, Edelman, fails to realize that this is bringing them down — who’d want to trust them after they keep throwing themselves on swords for Wal-Mart and who’d want to hire them given Wal-Mart’s horrid reputation — and they’d be better off resigning the account, no matter what it’s worth. Greed is usually such a simplistic explanation for bad behavior but in this case, it explains everything. This wouldn’t be so incredibly apparent if it didn’t keep happening over and over and over again.

The latest of the company’s moral lapses is the story of Debbie Shank, a former employee who was hit by a truck, is severely brain-damaged, and who won a lawsuit to help pay for her very expensive care. Wal-Mart wanted a piece of that suit.

Wal-Mart’s health care plan lets the retail giant recoup the cost of its expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit. And Wal-Mart set out to do just that after Shank and her husband, Jim, won $1 million after suing the trucking company involved in the wreck. After legal fees, the couple received $417,000.

Wal-Mart sued the Shanks to recoup $470,000 it paid for her medical care. However, a court ruled that the company could only recoup about $275,000 — the amount that was left in a trust fund for her care.

Who cares what the clause says? The story went on TV and it inspires both heartbreak and rage (much of it in blogs). It’s obvious that Wal-Mart has no moral compass and not even a self-interested sense of priorities given its PR problems, especially over its health care for employees.

People make fun of Google’s righteous vow not to be evil. It’s practically a self-parody. And it’s a shame that any institution should think that it needs to make such a promise; shouldn’t it be presumed?

But imagine if Google took over Wal-Mart and made that one change, posting a sign in every store and every office: Don’t be evil. Imagine if that became the basis of firings and hirings: out with the bad air, in with the good air. Could the culture of this company possibly be reformed? Could they ever see that being evil to employees and customers is bad business? Could they ever train employees to think differently, to factor decency into their decisions? Or has it descended too far into hell?

The contrast between Wal-Mart and Google illuminates Google’s vow in a new light. It doesn’t look so silly to promise not to be evil when you watch the business of an evil company.

: LATER: I meant to add this: Wal-Mart spends many, many times as much on PR with Edelman as it was going after from the poor, brain-damaged accident victim and her family. Even from a self-interested, practical, sensible perspective, they should have seen that this would be damaging — so much so that Edelman would have been better paying the fee itself. This also indicates bad management judgment at Wal-Mart.