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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I think it's fair to argue that a company's purpose is best illustrated by its revenue streams. Reasonable people can disagree depending on the circumstances.

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Not necessarily the case.

Github's revenue stream is through private repositories (both hosted on github.com and self-hosted enterprise), but I don't think you could reasonably assert that Github's purpose is to make a profit off of keeping code private. Their actions, in fact, suggest precisely the opposite.

In some cases, a company could transcend its initial purpose, but still keep it around as a/the revenue stream as a means to the new end. Not many/any new and further out there Google initiatives have made it to wide scale public adoption, so it's yet unclear whether Google would be such a company, but it could very well turn out to be one.

If it's a publicly traded company, it has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors; so I'd have to agree with you. It's purpose is to make money. It might spend money to buy goodwill to earn loyalty, but at the end of the business day, its a business.

Google's corporate charter was specifically written to avoid that. And shareholders have no meaningful voting rights, so they can't override it there either.

>If it's a publicly traded company, it has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors //

Where is this codified?

It doesn't have to be "codified" to be fiduciary. The trust relationship between any investor and the investment enterprise is that the enterprise will be able to generate a return on the investment. If it doesn't assume this, it generally will be deemed a non-profit.

If it's not codified then it's more likely an expectation than a responsibility. Of course investors expect a return, that's what the term "investor" entails.

Non-pecuniary returns can satisfy the responsibilities of an enterprise.

It appeared that a legal obligation was being suggested. What sort of obligation was being suggested and how is that obligation derived and enforced?

To play devil's advocate, what is Apple's "purpose"? How often has it changed?

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