I just watched a webcast of a very informal talk given by Alexander Macgillivray, Senior Product and Intellectual Property Counsel at Google, at Oxford, teleconnected to the Berkman Center. A couple of points arose:

1. Alex says that Google is not becoming an ISP. It has wired a local pizza place and a local gym, and has put in a bid to wire SF (where wire=go wireless). It’s buying up dark fiber for its own internal use. But it’s not going to become an ISP. [Too bad. Somone has to save the Internet. Might as well be Google.]

2. He was asked how frequently Google is asked by governments to give up information. He carefully said that he’s not allowed to say, but it’s less than other big companies. He also noted that the law prevents him from giving a trustworthy answer to this question.

3. Jonathan Zittrain checked the Google user license which turns out to say that if Google is sold, users will be notified that their data is going into new hands, but there is no language giving users the ability to opt out. Alex said that he’d raise that back at HQ.

4. I asked him whether “Don’t be evil” translates to “Trust Sergey and Larry,” and whether that scales. He answered that Google’s culture is strong. But that’s exactly the problem. “Don’t be evil” only makes sense in an homogeneous culture. It’s great that Google has morality in mind, but the “Don’t be evil” slogan makes it sound like it’s clear what’s good and what’s evil. How about “Try to make the world better,” or “Be aware” or “Muddle through”? Just thinking out loud… [Tags: google berkman oxford]

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