Since clinging to the original motto of “Don’t Be Evil” proved too great a burden in the emerging web economy, the more realistic slogan of “Be Less Evil than Microsoft” seemed a better fit, and an effortless goalpost to hit, according to CEO Eric Schmidt.
“With the Microsoft/Yahoo merger, the bar for evil across the web has been raised,” explains Google co-founder Larry Page. “There’s a lot of revenue to be realized in minimal amounts of evil and we owe it to the shareholders, namely me and Sergey [Brin, fellow co-founder and majority shareholder] to explore how far Microsoft is going to debase their customers, and ensure we never get anywhere close to that level.”
Analysts point to the fact that there is still tremendous money in linking to illegal content and accepting ads from the most unscrupulous companies, but more importantly, allowing Microsoft, Yahoo, Bing, Live and other self-same entities to be linked to – and link from – Google.
“Microsoft has barely begun to tap into the unspeakable things that they can do in India, and with a market growing like that, we’d be crazy not to take a wicked whack at it, but without all the pent-up penchant for evil they have inside them,” said one anonymous source at Google, wishing only to be known as Nikesh Arora, President of Global Sales Operations and Business Development.
“$300 million dollars doesn’t just make itself every day, you have to find a way to extract it from the internet ethos. The one thing we’ve found that works really well for us and our users is by always remaining less evil than Microsoft.”
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was reached in his Seattle office, and told Glossy News that he has “not been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft since 2000, why are you asking me to comment on something that happened in less than a week ago?”
Vista users are encouraged to revert to Microsoft ME. Not that it will help, but it will at least leave an admittedly acquired aftertaste one will not soon forget.