Google IPO Raises $1.67B With "Don't Be Evil" Motto

Google completed its initial public offering on August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion by pricing 19,605,052 Class A shares at $85 per share. The IPO was unconventional, using a “modified” Dutch auction method that challenged Wall Street norms.

Most significantly, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin included a founders’ letter in the Form S-1 prospectus with a section header reading “Don’t be evil.” The letter stated: “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

The Promise vs. Reality

The “Don’t be evil” motto became Google’s defining cultural statement, positioning the company as an ethical alternative to monopolistic tech companies like Microsoft. The founders explicitly promised to prioritize social good over short-term profits.

Twenty years later, Google would face the most significant antitrust enforcement actions since the Microsoft case:

• 2017: EU fined Google €2.42 billion for search manipulation
• 2018: EU fined Google €4.34 billion for Android bundling
• 2020: DOJ sued Google for search monopoly maintained through $12+ billion annually in exclusionary contracts
• 2023: DOJ sued Google seeking breakup of ad tech monopoly taking 30-50% of publisher revenues

Monopolization Through “Innovation”

Google systematically abused its search dominance to favor its own services, demote competitors, manipulate ad auctions through Project Bernanke, and extract monopoly rents from both publishers and advertisers. The company colluded with Facebook through “Jedi Blue” agreements to maintain market power and used vertical integration across search, advertising, mobile platforms, and video to create insurmountable competitive barriers.

Cultural Significance

Google quietly removed “Don’t be evil” from its official code of conduct in 2015, replacing it with “Do the right thing.” By then, the company had already established the tax avoidance schemes, anticompetitive practices, and monopolistic behaviors that would generate hundreds of billions in profits while avoiding accountability through regulatory capture and political influence.

The 2004 IPO prospectus promised ethical behavior. The following two decades delivered systematic monopolization—perhaps the greatest example of corporate hypocrisy in tech industry history.