There’s a concept in game theory called strategyproofness, which essentially means that the rules of the game give you the incentive to reveal your true preferences (regardless of whether or not other players are doing the same).
This is what being ‘not evil’ is really all about - telling the truth about your strategy. It’s powerful because it forces you to focus on innovation, instead of gaming the system.
The interesting question is why some tech markets are strategyproof - whereas others (think MS) clearly aren’t. I think the answer has something to do with this: as disruption accelerates, truth-telling becomes a dominant strategy because gaming the system leaves you worse off in the long run, by making your decisions over time inconsistent.
You can think of this as a repeated game where outcomes are path-dependent because both rules and decisions have a memory.
