Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles -- and All of Us

Acclaimed Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst takes on the biggest business story of our times, in a penetrating indictment of how today’s largest tech companies are hijacking our data, our livelihoods, our social fabric, and our minds.

“Don’t be evil” was enshrined as Google’s corporate mantra back in its early days, when the company’s cheerful logo still conveyed the utopian vision for a future in which technology would inevitably make the world better, safer, and more prosperous.

Unfortunately, it’s been quite a while since Google, or the majority of the Big Tech companies, lived up to this founding philosophy. Today, the utopia they sought to create is looking more dystopian than ever: from digital surveillance and the loss of privacy, to the spreading of misinformation and hate speech, to predatory algorithms targeting the weak and vulnerable, to products that have been engineered to manipulate our desires.

How did we get here? How did these once-scrappy and idealistic enterprises become rapacious monopolies with the power to corrupt our elections, co-opt all our data, and control the largest single chunk of corporate wealth - while evading all semblance of regulation and taxes? In Don’t Be Evil, Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar tells the story of how Big Tech lost its soul - and ate our lunch.

Through her skilled reporting and unparalleled access - won through nearly 30 years covering business and technology - she shows the true extent to which behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon are monetizing both our data and our attention, without us seeing a penny of those exorbitant profits. Finally, Foroohar lays out a plan for how we can resist, by creating a framework that fosters innovation while also protecting us from the dark side of digital technology.