"Do no evil"

The title refers to Google's motto, an ideology that came under fire when it included censorship tools in its search software. As I've discussed before, corporations are mandated to act unethically if it is legal and profitable. Google had many reasons to expand into China that far outweighed the criticisms that it received, and while I ultimately agree with they decision, I don't think they should be allowed to keep their motto.

To launch Google China, the Chinese government required Google to filter out censored material, in order to maintain the "Great Firewall of China" that blocks content the government dislikes. Google claimed this was a necessary evil as part of the greater benefit of bringing Google's knowledge to China's many connected inhabitants, but many people disagreed with this claim and criticized the company for its action. Google's real motive was, as it should be, to expand into a rather large and profitable market, at the cost of some negative PR and no significant drop in searches in its other markets. I hardly doubt that many people decided to switch search engines as an act of protest, although critics should have done so to match their actions with their talk.

Obviously, Google's stated intentions can't always correlate to its mandated actions, but on the whole Google could argue that its ethics are part of its appeal and continued use, and are therefore necessary to remain profitable. Google's success, however, is based on its algorithms rather than its ethics, so it can hardly be expected to act purely ethically if The Body Shop, a corporation claims to be fiercely opposed to animal testing, sold products that were tested on animals! Minimizing evil is a perfectly acceptable action for the majority of corporations, as only those overlooked by the public eye can operate unethically without serious consequences, but no corporation can claim that it is entirely ethical.

(This post is something I thought about and could write up fairly quickly. I have a post, masquerading as an essay, in the works on extreme poverty, as well as one on the West's military-industrial complex, and one on my cooking and baking experiences. Guess which one's the funny one?)