November 26, 2005 12:06 PM

Doug Edwards is the long-time online marketing guy at Google who just recently left and started a blog to talk about his experiences. It's the first blog I've found in years where I read the entire thing from beginning to end. Here's how he explains the logic of "don't be evil" in the context of the Google Print controversy:

First, I accept that Larry and Sergey really are brilliant. I'm sure that on IQ tests, they're off the charts, but that's not the kind of brilliance I mean. I mean brilliant in the sense that they have a vision that burns so brightly within them it scorches everything that stands in its way. The truth is so obvious to them that they have no patience for the niceties of polite society when bringing that vision to life.

Obviously, it's a good idea to make as much information as possible available to as many people as possible. Obviously, a lot of valuable information is in books. Obviously, helping people find that information is good. Obviously, an author only benefits if people find out that his or her book contains useful information. There are no shades of grey in this. Truth is, after all, a binary function.

It's not important to slow down and explain things, if the value of what you're doing is so self-evident that eventually people will see it for themselves.

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