And they kept that promise! Look at the internet today.
Microsoft is no longer "evil", and the internet is fine, so "do no evil" is no longer necessary.
People assumed do not evil had something to do with privacy, or this or that, or lots of other things people read into it.
It didn't. It was just one thing: Open standards and promoting the open internet.
I'm not sure if I believe DNE was exactly about Microsoft, rather a more general mantra. In 98' the founders were running around giving talks about how 'advertising was ruining the internet' which wasn't really an MS things. So I think MS was just one factor, but yes, most don't remember a time when they were so dominant.
Not that it matters too much, but the motto was the much less ambitious (and more achievable) "Don't be evil".
So, where's the open standard for Hangouts?
(It used to be XMPP when it was Google Talk. But it's not anymore. And even back when, it wasn't federated, contrary to "the open Internet.")
In general, it feels like you're right, but only in a sense that Google did drive open standards - to bludgeon Microsoft. Which it did quite successfully, and we're all better off for it. But now that they have their own empire, they're not so keen on all that open stuff anymore, whenever they have a monopoly position to abuse.
The Wikipedia article [1] presents the motto (which is actually "Don't be evil") as being much more than that, from its origin and throughout its use. On second look, it doesn't even use the adjective "open" or mention standards.
I am looking. What I see is it being devoured by Google. Search 99%, Chrome 80%, private email 90%, Google accounts for work, for school kids, and Google Analytics tracking in every web site.
I said private email accounts.
I don't know why they haven't been punished for that yet after the successful taming of Microsoft some years ago.
They made their brand synonymous with the word 'search' - my god man, that's worth billions, minimum.
They've done it in an oddly naive 'authentic' way, by I think truly believing their own schtick, and drinking their own coolaid. And I'm not nearly as cynical as the above posters, Google is way more ethnical that most companies. My god man, if Google wanted to they could change electoral outcomes, simply form a massive hedge fund and beat everyone at investing, do evil things the likes of which we've never hard of. I'm constantly impressed by how actually objective they've been about a lot of stuff given 99% of other CEO's would have abused the data position a long, long time ago. Not to say they are perfect, but ... compared to most, they have been pretty good. Though that's changing.
They've done it without any hardcore ad spends, or any real classical marketing attempts to make us believe things one way or another, so kudos on them.
But yes, they are kind of bad at most classical parts of marketing, communications ... heck even some kinds of product management. But the 'Engineers first' mentality got them where they are, I'm going to doubt that part of their DNA will change.