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Comment by wallawe | Hacker News Reader

I sympathize with your idealistic sort of thinking but it is unreasonable. Corporations (which is what Google is) are responsible to shareholders. The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder. It has nothing to do with being good to people. The only way that this guy's problem will get solved is if enough people catch wind of his situation that it affects the fairly popular status of the Google brand. I use a lot of their services myself and would be just as infuriated if this happened to me, but you have to keep in mind what the purpose of Google is essentially. Now, if you want to talk about the down/upside of our capitalistic society and corporate greed that is another conversation to be had.

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"The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder."

No, the purpose of a corporation is to efficiently organize work.

Fundamentally, corporations, and the entire economic system, exist for only one purpose: to create a better human society. Profit is the incentive to get them to work for the greater good, but it's not the end-goal. We've temporarily lost sight of that, but sooner or later we're going to have to redefine corporations so we can keep the good (competitive drive), and discard the bad (profit at the expense of humanity).

Personally, I would be very interested to see minimum holding times for shares (incentivizing long-term behavior), and maximum lifetimes for corporate personhood (corporations should all die at some point, just like other people).

This is simply the definition I was given in business school. If you type in "purpose of a corporation" on Google, this is what you will get (which is comedically ironic in this situation).

"Efficiently organizing work" is what must be done as a by product or failure is ensured in this survival of the fittest capitalistic system.

I agree that the ethics are not what they should be in the corporate culture today, but that doesn't change the nature nor the purpose and definition of corporation.

  > The purpose of a corporation by definition is to 
  > maximize the bottom line for the shareholder

That is a definition without qualification. What is the bottom line for the shareholder? The stock price tomorrow? The stock price in 10 years? The dividends paid out this year? The dividends paid over the next decade?

If I push up the stock price $100 over 2 years, but in the process destroy the brand in a way that causes the business to drop in value and eventually close over the next 3 years, have I increased shareholder value?

What if I cut the customer-service budget, saving money and causing customers to hate the company? What happens when an incumbent shows up in the market, and steals away most of my customer base? Did that create shareholder value?

Reciting "money++ is the only thing that matters" as the definition of a corporation is brain-dead.

"Reciting "money++ is the only thing that matters" as the definition of a corporation is brain-dead"

That wasn't my intention, and my definition was ambiguous, you are right. I wrote that off the top of my head. To be more accurate, it is "to maximize shareholder value."

This includes building a solid brand name and maintaining a good reputation via ethical practices.

I believe the idea of "publicly-held companies" is a net negative for humanity. It encourages immoral behavior.

Obviously my thoughts are unreasonable. I wish the world were unreasonable. Because then people might empathize with each other to an unreasonable degree, resulting in far less grief and hate within our microscopic timeline of our universe.

I have to disagree with you. "Publicly-held companies" don't encourage immoral behavior. People encourage immoral behavior. I know that some folks like to think of people as "basically good", but I don't think history has held that out. Humanity has proven time after time that regardless of the social structure or organization, their tendency for immoral behavior pervades each one.

"We did it for the shareholders" may be a unique excuse in the realm of organizations, but governments, churches, companies, school boards, communes, etc all suffer from problems like these. The difference with public companies is that folks can vote with their dollars, or in an adequately free economy, can band together and compete.

A review of government and society prior to about 1600 (ie, the bulk of human history) does not suggest that people are inherently very nice.

A notable example is Ivan the Terrible and his society.

What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money.

It is not the pubicly-held companies. It is the power of money to control, persuade, influence, or even empower.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that money doesn't buy happiness but even truer that not having money can cause unhappiness via stress among other things.

The problem is what people who have money decide to do with it and how they choose to influence the larger whole. Many of the people who have put their entire intellect towards making money, have desired to do so for the wrong reasons and therefore use it in a net negative way as you have put it.

I guess what I am saying, is that it falls on the individual to make the right decision, and not corporations, governments or societies as a whole.

> The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize > the bottom line for the shareholder.

No, the purpose is whatever the corporate charter says. It's just that most of those are pretty vague, and for a publicly held corporation it's been held that within the bounds of the charter there is a duty to maximize shareholder value (whatever that means). For privately held corporations, of course, the private holders just call the shots.

But back to charters... you may be interested in the fact that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_corporation exist and distinctly do NOT maximize shareholder value. Also, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#Mutual_benefit_corp.... And in recent years there has been a movement to create charters that look just like your typical public corporation charter but impose certain restrictions on what the corporation is or is not allowed to do in the process of making money. Several states issue such charters at this point. Again, the corporation is responsible to shareholders but within the bounds of the charter. Which shareholders should read before investing, of course; that's basic due diligence.

"The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder. It has nothing to do with being good to people."

So in your opinion being good to people have NOTHING to do with maximizing the bottom line from the shareholder.

I beg to differ, IMHO the most profitable business are those that provide a very good product or service to their customers(people).

I remember the pre-google days, Altavista that forced you to click 5 buttons to do the same thing you could do with google on "Advanced search", That push pop ups that will flick on the screen with vivid colors and force you to visit their stupid "portals", that sold the three first web results page to the best bidders(so they were crap).

I recall that days every single day I have to visit my old hotmail account because they are not dead. If there were not some company that gave a better service that they do(google) they will come back.

The purpose of a corporation is to further the aims of England, under royal charter, and as a reward is allowed to make a profit.

That's how it was in the 1500s.

The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder.

No, the purpose of a corporation is to faithfully carry out the corporate bylaws. There are many corporations that do little for the shareholder's bottom line: private schools, charities, self-styled socially responsible businesses, co-ops, government-run public service companies, profit-neutral public utility companies, and many others.

I sympathize with your idealistic sort of thinking but it is unreasonable.

Google could easily start a service department and run it as a profit center: simply require a massive credit card charge or wire transfer before they will help fix your account. That they do not is an intentional choice.

"Fiduciary duty" is not a good excuse to be unethical.

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