Google’s Relationship with Payday Loans: It’s Complicated

“Don’t be evil,” Google’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, famously proclaimed in the manifesto they published just before their company went public, in 2004. Avoiding evil suggested a pretty low bar, but the vow itself—along with the founders’ boast that “our business practices are beyond reproach”—was an invitation to find contrary examples. There have been plenty of nominations, including the announcement, in 2012, that Google would track its customers’ Gmail missives, Web searches, and YouTube usage, which had the effect of  helping advertisers target potential customers. (One headline proclaimed, “Google’s Broken Promise: The End of ‘Don’t Be Evil.’ ”)