Everyone knows about Google™; they became dominant by doing a single thing very very well. The very name has become a verb in our vernacular.
Their “unofficial motto” is: Don’t be evil. It’s a clear (and well-deserved) slap at other corporations who, well, are.
But Google’s thinking on this is limited to the situation at hand. It’s problematic to proclaim that your intent is to not do evil, while churning out tools that could be perverted to evil uses by others.
What happens to all that carefully-guarded data if a takeover bid convinces the stockholders to sell? Or if the servers get hacked? Or if a no-name black-ops department decides to Waco the building and hot-swap the hard drives at gunpoint?
Data providers, lawmakers, and in fact anyone who creates any entity that directly impacts people or their behavior, must put on the Black Hat from time to time and ask the hard question: How could what I’m creating be abused when I lose control of it?
So at least one modification is required for Google Motto version 1.01:
Don’t be evil… and don’t be naive.