Don't Be Evil was never about not doing any evil. It was about the understanding that Google engineers were aware of their company's increasing power and influence, understood how their actions could cause great harm to society as a result, and were concerned enough to put their foot down and force management to codify the recognition in the corporate ethos.

And which got thrown overboard the moment it impacted their pocket books. Principles are worthless if you're not prepared to pay for them.

Indeed it was marketing fluff, like any big corporation has for their newly employees about "the mission", with compulsory training, that everyone forgets after a couple of months.

That is correct, but in old google, sometimes employee pushback would get shitty and evil plans/products/policies rolled back. Not all of them, but enough of them. I've seen it first-hand.

That's no longer the case.