… in the tech industry that is.
Evil used to be the vendor lock-in. Evil used to be hefty licensing fees for every new feature. Evil used to be bundling a browser with the OS to kill the competition.
That is all what Google is not. Not the old fashion evil.
Google is giving away everything for free. The services like email (Gmail), video hosting (Youtube), office suite (Google Docs), map service (Google Maps, Earth) are taken for granted to be free. In past couple of years they are even open sourcing a lot of their products - Android, Chrome OS, GWT, Wave, Closure (library that is building block of lot of online Google apps). And not that the free products Google gives away are in any way inferior to their competitors. For example, I am stunned to see how fast a web browser can be after using Chrome. Consumers couldn't ask for more free stuff. Yet, Google could think of some more. They gave away a turn-by-turn navigation software FREE, obviating those expensive GPS gadgets literally overnight. If some speculations come true (which seem likely given the Moore's law), Google will give away Chrome laptops and Android devices for free in next couple of years.
The end users can't be anything but thankful to Google.
But what about Firefox, Garmin, TomTom, OpenDNS, Bit.ly, Symbian. And many others who are hoping that none of the smart engineers at Google comes up with an idea that competes with their product, otherwise they will be forgotten within a blink of an eye. (Half the time I wonder where will ReaderScope be if Google launches official Google Reader android app).
However, just because Google destroys handful of competing products doesn't make it evil (not the old fashion evil at least).