"Don't be evil": Google's labor, technology, and the limits of corporate good

Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto and its public image as corporate do-gooder are examined through a material and cultural analysis of its internal labor hierarchies and its technological products. By focusing on Google's hidden contracted reproductive service laborers, as well as the premises and consequences of disruptive, digital technology, this project reveals how the realities of necessary but undesirable work are obscured and contested. This dual focus allows for a revaluation of intimate labors in two ways. First, it reveals that Google's sustained capital accumulation relies on its reproductive intimate labor. Second, it recognizes that Google's corporate practices of invisibilizing intimate labor and mediating social intimacies are importantly reflective of the larger social, economic, and cultural trends in our emerging knowledge-based/service-based economy. This project draws upon Marxist critiques of capital, Foucauldian notions of biopower, transnational feminist and digital labor theory, and close readings of cultural texts. Its evidence is interdisciplinary, including employee memoirs, conducted interviews, employee demographics, public company information, contemporary news reports, and speculative film.