GOOGLE BE GOOD
Fundamental to Google’s approach to doing business is to do no evil. In Google’s statement of company philosophy, its commitment is clear (http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/):
“ You can make money without doing evil. . . .
We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust. ”
I appreciate that affirmation and it makes perfect sense. Regardless of the size of your company, you need to do business ethically and honestly. Customers and noncustomers will all appreciate that commitment. Moreover, the larger your company grows, in a sense, it is even more important that these commitments ring true because the opportunities for abuse grow in size and number. (Of course smaller organizations do not have an excuse to do evil.)
Recently, the European Union accused Google of violating antitrust law by allegedly taking advantage of its size to steer consumers to its own shopping platform. The EU is also making similar accusations for how Google is using its Android mobile phone operating system, as James Kanter and Mark Scott explain (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/international/european-union-google-antitrust-case.html?_r=0):
“ The regulators have focused on accusations that Google diverts traffic from competitors’ rivals to favor its own comparison shopping site. That led the European Commission to issue a set of formal charges, known as a statement of objections.
How Google responds in the case—the biggest since the case against Microsoft in the 2000s—and to what degree the accusations hamper its own business or aid its rivals remain to be seen. Google holds a roughly 90 percent share in the region’s search market, and the company contends that in both web searches and Android software it plays fair. ”
Currently, we certainly only know a fraction of the full story. We can only hope that after the investigations occur, we find that Google is playing fair all the way. On the other hand, if it is not, then Google needs to be held completely accountable for its abuses.
To embrace ethics, one must reject evil. For Google’s sake, let’s hope that is exactly what it is doing.
