Why would we believe the promises of the ones who ruined the primary utility of their core product in the first place, and convinced or blackmailed the rest of the internet to take part in the ruination ? An advertising corporation will tell us to put cyanide on our pizza if it makes them an extra buck this quarter, and google is worse than that. Profit despite the social costs is doing no evil /s
The main reason for the name is that it sorts before both Amazon and Apple in the Big Tech directory. It's literally as petty as that. They obviously chose a word that was related to searching within that criterion, but still.
It's honestly weird to imagine them being concerned with branding at all because they are literally an umbrella corporation that doesn't seem to interface with customers directly. Like I never think about them and I suspect having regular people think more about them would not be good for them in any way.
"Alphabet" works for that in my head because it slides off my brain. I forget they exist until something reminds me.
They probably want to avoid anything that sounds like it might be Jewish, so Aaron is out. This is not because of direct anti-Semitism, but because of the fear of it. Avoiding such words avoids the subject entirely. (Ironically, the Semitic origins of the word "Alphabet" aren't as obvious.)
Aardvark is too alien and weird. Also, C-levels are deathly afraid of varking too aard.
Abacus might have been a better choice, but it doesn't come with the infuriatingly tantalising closeness of one or two letters' distance.
It actually wasn't, I used to think that as well, but they just moved it to a different section of their Code of Conduct, out of the Preface. Part of the reason so many people think it was removed is because of the countless headlines saying it was removed...
(from the preface)
They did violate federal labor laws by firing 3 employees who brought forth a lawsuit alleging the clause was a contractual obligation, though. So that sucks.
They changed it to "Do the right thing" which literally makes it less original but more importantly, more pliable, "do the right thing... for 'google'."
Im shure the CEO is "doing the right thing... for his wallet"