Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

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A counterpoint: Google believed they could attract better engineers (which can be explained either as genuinely more skilled people, who have more ability to choose where they work, or simply more passionate people) with the "Don't be evil" policy. Oracle existed all along. Google wanted to not be Oracle.

Now, Google has decided they want contracts like they're Oracle and they want staff like they're not Oracle. They can't have it both ways. It's not so much that Oracle is a more grown-up company because it learned to pursue profits and not good - it's just that it's easier to survive that way. (Hence the appearance that Oracle is a "normal" business; it's an easier way to run a business, is all, so more businesses do that.)

Nobody forced Google to be a public company. Nobody forced Google to grow as big as it did. Nobody forced Google to talk to China. They brought this on themselves, and they should have known that they couldn't do this and still remain Google.

> Nobody forced Google to be a public company

This is the relevant part.

As soon as you're public, it inevitably introduces strong pressures to pursue profit no matter its cost, as it decouples the negative social externalities corporate actions can cause from the profit made from those actions.

How is there more coupling between a company's profit and negative social externalities resulting from its actions when the company is privately-owned? If anything, I would think there's rather less coupling in privately owned companies, as a public company is at least forced to be somewhat transparent, publish SEC releases, subject itself to audits, etc. For example, unlike a private company, it wouldn't be possible for Google to engage in a material transformation of their business without accounting for it publicly towards their shareholders.

No it doesn’t. There is no threat to google given that the majority voting control is held amongst the founders. Same for Facebook. There is no risk of a hostile takeover or being voted out by public shareholders.

Shareholders have plenty of ways of impacting corporate direction that fall far short of hostile takeovers. E.g. lawsuits; the very fact that a public company has to provide more information about its finances. There's a reason Ruth Porat was brought on after IPO and not before.

> So we should be blaming Brin and Page for this directly?

I'm totally fine with that.

I'd add Schmidt into the mix too. He's had the biggest had in turning Google into what it is.

Google's motto "Don't be evil" is not rigorous. Huawei claims something similar recently. The problem is who defines what's good or evil? Every group of people think they are noble, and the enemies are evil.

Sure, the motto by itself is just words. But like all mottos or mission statements ("free software" is a familiar example) the interesting thing is who else uses the phrase and what they mean by it.

Prospective Google employees saw what Google meant by "Don't be evil" by seeing how Google behaved (and specifically how other Google employees behaved) and decided it was worth following. They didn't just see the three words and think that sounds great.

And I disagree that every group of people thinks they're noble - the comment I replied to specifically says that companies are better when they do not see themselves as noble and only see themselves as profit-seeking.

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