June 11, 2026
Don’t Be Evil? Don’t Bet On It
Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass
Google’s ethics meltdown sparks cheers, eye-rolls, and shutdown predictions
TLDR: A former Google security leader says the company abandoned the values that once made it admirable, and he’s leaving over it. Commenters are split between praising a principled stand, mocking it as late and performative, and arguing over whether tech should ever help build tools for war or surveillance.
A former top Android security boss at Google just posted a dramatic goodbye, saying the company he joined in 2017 as a hopeful, values-driven giant has lost its moral compass. In his telling, old Google was the place where workers could push back, military deals got canceled, and “Don’t Be Evil” still meant something. He paints a picture of a company that once prized protecting ordinary people—whether they were celebrities or refugees—and says that spirit is now gone.
But the real fireworks are in the comments, where the crowd instantly split into Team Brave Exit and Team Spare Me. One camp is applauding the resignation as a rare act of conscience, with one commenter flatly saying, “It’s great to follow your own moral compass, whatever the cost,” while another thanked him for showing what pacifism looks like in a world run by giant tech firms. The other camp? Much harsher. One skeptic basically rolled their eyes and said: you took the giant paycheck, enjoyed the rising stock, and now you discovered how big tech works? Ouch.
Then came the darker popcorn takes: predictions that Google will try to shut the whole thing down fast, maybe with a payout and a legal warning. And of course, the eternal internet argument arrived right on cue: if bad actors use powerful tools, should “our side” refuse to build them? That debate turned the thread from resignation post into full-blown ethics cage match. In short: one man quit, and the comment section turned it into a referendum on money, war, hypocrisy, and whether moral awakenings come with stock options.
Key Points
- •The author says he joined Google in 2017 as Director of Android Platform Security after years of studying Android security from outside the company.
- •The article describes Android as an open-source-first platform with more than 2 billion users and emphasizes the difficulty outside researchers had in engaging directly with Google’s internal Android team.
- •The author says Google at the time pursued carbon neutrality, canceled Pentagon-related contracts after employee opposition, and published 2018 AI principles restricting work on weapons, surveillance, and human-rights-violating applications.
- •He portrays Google’s earlier culture as transparent and values-driven, citing leadership engagement from Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the internal importance of the “Don’t Be Evil” motto.
- •The article highlights Android security accomplishments including making full-device encryption the default in Android 10 on low-cost devices and enabling end-to-end encrypted Android backup.