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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Here is the question and results:

http://news.sky.com/story/1084991/britons-trust-google-as-mu...

As you can see any conclusions you can draw about Google are pointless since it was specifically benchmarked against politicians, banks etc which are universally disliked.

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For convenience.

Question: "To what extent do the following have your best interests at heart?"

NHS: 37%

Police: 26%

Charities: 21%

Supermarkets: 19%

Google: 17%

Religious institutions: 17%

Building societies: 15%

Local authorities: 10%

Private healthcare firms: 9%

Facebook: 9%

Lawyers: 8%

Banks: 7%

Media: 6%

Utility companies: 6%

Insurance companies: 5%

Politicians: 3%

The only wat this is true is if 17% of people hold stock in Google. Corporations are I believe legally obliged to only have their stock holders interests at heart.

If this survey measures anythings it's just how much goodwill exists toward various organizations.

Publicly traded American companies are obligated under fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their shareholders. They are not, however, required to have _only_ their stock holders interests at heart.

Quite. If a company wants to maximise shareholder value then it needs to appreciate that its shareholders may value more than money.

Hmm I should read up more about the legal obligations. Thanks.

However by that definition it seems to be that if they are operating in the best interests of the shareholders they can't act in anyones elses interests if that causes any expenditure.

Obviously I'm not saying they can't act in the interests of others, but only incidentally and when it coincides with the interests of the shareholders.

Their stock holders may have customers interests at heart. That is how a good business works.

I can't believe banks scored as high as 7%

I suspect the banks would pay a lot of money to find out who those 7% are...

I bank at a credit union [1]. I specifically remember one year where they sent a letter saying roughly "We made too much money. Your account has been credited with your share of the excess." Of course, that's what a credit union implies but they're a bank to me so I'd be in the 7%.

[1] https://www.deltacommunitycu.com/

I think the UK equivalent would perhaps be a "building society" - which are on that list at 15%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_society

I think those are the people that work for a bank. In urban parts of GB probably more than 7%.

And I'm actually surprised that Building Societies scored so low, but maybe I've got some weird bias.

I bank with Nationwide who are supposed to be a building society. In my experience they're in every way just like a bank.

Reads like that old joke "heaven is where the police is British and hell is where..." Ah, never mind.

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