February 15, 2006
“Do No Evil” in China?
Seems to me that Google is having a progressively harder time living up to their motto of “Do No Evil.” Which to be fair is difficult for all of us, especially 1000 lb. gorillas. But, once we deal with the surreality of politicians calling tech companies to task over a “lack of social responsibility” - just what are Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco thinking? A Google official acknowledged that figuring out China’s internet market “has been a difficult exercise.”
Well, I give you China isn’t an easy market but sometimes you have to do the right thing, versus doing things right.
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February 16th, 2006 at 10:16 am
You know, watching this whole China thing has been very interesting. I’m remembering something I read in the Wharton Shool’s newsletter, Knowledge@Wharton, about a Supreme Court decision (out of the 1970s, I think) finding that corporate officers are required to maximize return on investment for shareholders and, when faced with decisions in which they must choose between doing what’s right and doing what’s profitable, the law requires them to do what will bring in the bucks.
Now, if my memory isn’t failing me — always a possibility — then this is another of those situations in which people who aren’t lawyers have trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that the law is neither right nor fair nor even necessarily just. It is simply the law. If we want corporate America to have a conscience, we’d have to legislate that because as matters stand right now, the case law says something very different.
And besides being an interesting intellectual exercise, it gives me another reason to be glad I’m a single-owner micro-corporation.
February 16th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Yes, indeedy. But isn’t it strange how so many corporate types have no trouble breaking the law when it comes to making money?
February 16th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
That was my first reaction too… But here’s the thing: China isn’t a democracy or a true republic, for that matter. Privacy laws and the kinds of freedoms that we often take for granted in the US don’t really exist there. So it’s natural that Google (or anyone, for that matter) would adopt a different set of business standards there than they do here. Cooperating with the Chinese government is simply the price of doing business in China. Google can either choose to own that market, or to let someone else take it. Is it a slippery slope? You bet… But let’s give the folks at Google the benefit of the doubt and see what happens. Once they have their foot in the door and own the Chinese market, they could very well be a catalyst for positive changes.
It’ll certainly be interesting to watch.