Software Development

Google has taken every precaution to remain a principled software development company devoted to the cause of ethical behavior and Open software development. Part of its efforts to maintain this way of doing business is to create a set of software development principles and participate fully in allowing others access to its code and by developing software development APIs to simplify interacting with Google programs.

Principles

Google worries about what it perceives to be evil trends in software development and has therefore created a set of broad software development principles. Google means to follow these principles in its own software development and hopes that others in the software industry will adopt them out of ethical concern for the end user. In brief, these principles are:

• Software should not trick you into installing it.

• When you install software, it should tell you its purpose or function, and if it makes money through ads, you should know that, too.

• Software should be easy to delete or disable.

• Software should not make secret changes to other installed programs, and the software user interface should not try to trick you.

• You should be asked before a software product can collect and transmit personal information.

• Software applications that meet these guidelines should not be bundled with software that does not.

You can join the software “Neighborhood Watch” by visiting www.stopbadware.org, the Web site for an independent group formed to fight malicious software.