Google's
strategy is to profit from advertising. It fundamentally benefits from knowing as much about its users as possible. Every tactic it has will always support that
strategy or it will risk failure.
You can tell its strategy motivates it toward evil (its term, not mine), because its slogan is "Don't be evil."
It chose that slogan because it risks being evil, in its own terms. It doesn't need a slogan like "Don't be unprofitable" or "Don't break the law" because its strategy doesn't point it in those directions. It points to being evil, in its terms.
Why else would a company feel so compelled to stop itself from doing evil than to make its most prominent slogan to stop itself? If its strategy didn't point it in that direction, why else would it try to stop itself from stopping being "evil"? All the brilliance of its engineers, managers, leaders, deals, and so on exists to support the company's strategy, which it realizes motivates them so much toward "evil" it has to stop itself as its highest or at least most public directive.
"Don't be evil" exists to make the place palatable to humans who understand the company's direction. Who made the slogan? The people who know the company's direction best. They know it better than you and they realize its direction.
Google has a technically superior product to its competitors. When you realize its most knowledgeable and powerful employees know its strategy points it to "be evil", you realize why people use alternatives whose strategies don't point them to "evil," especially when current events highlight the consequences of its strategic choice of knowing so much about you, its users.