Google tries to straddle the ethical fence
Google took a lot of heat for censoring its results in China; even though it alerted users about this and would not give user data to the government (as MSN and Yahoo had), what it did was unethical.Now, Google had a proposal put to shareholders that would have prevented that kind of behavior. The board told shareholders to vote it down. The shareholders voted it down.
It's agreed that Google has fought for users rights more vigilantly than others; but they say that their motto is "Do No Evil". That's a lie. Their motto is "do as little evil while maximizing shareholder value".
I saw this happen when EarthLink and MindSpring merged and the MindSpring Core Values and Beliefs were discarded in favor of higher executive salaries and bonuses, off-shoring and layoffs, and manipulative behavior from the top down. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical. In comparison to the companies that are evil (solely led by the dollar to the exclusion of all other values), Google is pretty good.
Why should Google be proud to be the tallest midget?
posted by Lachlan @ 1:21 PM
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