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> google started Calico because you can't show ads to dead people good one. I am not sure why people view it as cynical to assume that for-profit corporations

> google started Calico because you can't show ads to dead people good one. I am not sure why people view it as cynical to assume that for-profit corporations act out of self interest. Have you ever gotten a company you worked for to authorize spending for something where you didn't justify it in terms of its benefit to the company? Was it millions of dollars like Google has spent on this HTTPS thing? To assume that Google is not doing this for profit would be to assume that they are incompetent or derelict in their professional duties, and that seems unlikely to me in this case.

DannyBee 9y ago
"Have you ever gotten a company you worked for to authorize spending for something where you didn't justify it in terms of its benefit to the company?" Yes, actually, and i was managing enough people that it was a dent (IE xx million a year investment in people alone). That company was, in fact, Google. "Was it millions of dollars like Google has spent on this HTTPS thing?" Yes. "To assume that Google is not doing this for profit would be to assume that they are incompetent or derelict in their professional duties, and that seems unlikely to me in this case." I'm going to disagree with you based on my experience above :)
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  > Yes, actually Can you explain how you spent millions of dollars on something that had no benefit whatsoever for your company? Now, you may have done something that had more ephemeral benefits and did not have directly attributable immediate revenue impacts, but I am pretty sure that it benefited your company somehow, and I am pretty sure that you justified the expense in terms of the benefit to your company. If I am wrong I would be interested to hear the details of this.
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    "Can you explain how you spent millions of dollars on something that had no benefit whatsoever for your company?" In what sense? Like why they let me do it? Because they aren't as profit driven as you seem to believe. I'm sure parts are, but not the part i was in. Additionally, the founders and CEO definitely cared more about doing the right thing than trying to eek out another little bit of profit for something. Unfortunately, it's not public in the particular case i'm referring to, so in that case, you'd just have to trust me. I have also managed similarly not-profit driven things, that are public, like election information publication (which was also xx million worth of people). This data and work was explicitly kept away from any profit driven part of the company, and not driven, at any level, by a desire to profit (In this case, eric thought we should do it, as did sergey, and they very much wanted it to be done because it was the right thing to do, and didn't want us to care one whit about either the business or goodwill aspects) I'm sure you will contrive a motive. But you can contrive all you want, it's basically "your random thoughts" against "the people who actually funded and supported it", and i trust them at their words. "Now, you may have done something that had more ephemeral benefits and did not have directly attributable immediate revenue impacts, but I am pretty sure that it benefited your company somehow, and I am pretty sure that you justified the expense in terms of the benefit to your company."" You've moved from claiming, essentially, direct commercial benefit (solidification of monopoly position) to "any benefit at all". I'm pretty sure no matter how i answer you are going to try to contrive benefit out of it. But i asked explicitly (when dealing with the non-public thing), and the answer all the way up to, as far as i know, Larry, was "no, we should do this because it's the right thing to do, we don't care if it benefits us". I did not justify the expense in terms of benefit to my company. As a lawyer, i can also tell you the professional duties you claim are either non-existent or not as absolute as you make them. Google, and pretty much all corporations, are simply not the black and white things you paint them to be. (and also, for the record, i actually very much hate corporatism :P)
    - saas_co_de 9y ago
      > As a lawyer, i can also tell you the professional duties you claim are either non-existent or not as absolute as you make them. "under American law we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to account for things properly, so if we were, for example, to just arbitrarily decide to pay a different tax rate than we were required to, a more favourable one for example to a particular country, how would we account for that?" - Eric Schmidt on why Google paid "£3.4m in tax on £3.2bn of sales" (.1%) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/27/google-eric-schmidt-change-law-tax https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/27/google-er...
      - DannyBee 9y ago
        Uh, so? Eric is legally wrong about this[1][2] I'm really unsure what is this comment supposed to add to the discussion. It doesn't respond substantively to any point i made, it's not even relevant to the quote you are responding to, it's not caselaw or legal argumentation, it's a CEO giving a political answer to a question. Is that supposed to be shocking or something? I'm not even sure. Truthfully, it makes it seem like you aren't even trying to have a real discussion, you just want to grind an axe. [1] "While the duty to maximize shareholder value may be a useful shorthand for a corporate manager to think about how to act on a day to day basis, this is not legally required or enforceable …. Under this legal regime, it is not malfeasance for boards or corporate chiefs to make decisions that do not maximize shareholder value." [2] "Contrary to what many believe, U.S. corporate law does not impose any enforceable legal duty on corporate directors or executives of public corporations to maximize profits or share price" (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...) [3] There are only two legal duties here. The duty of care and the duty of loyalty. As I said, neither is about maximization of profits, though you will occasionally find courts with loose language around the duty of loyalty. The duty of loyalty's history is about not making money at the corporations expense - you must put the corporation's interests above your own. Transforming that into a "you must maximize profit at all costs" is ... a pretty far step. Again, 99.99% court cases here, and traditional breach of this duty are about either taking a corporate opportunity for yourself or making self-interested transactions.

DannyBee 9y ago

"Have you ever gotten a company you worked for to authorize spending for something where you didn't justify it in terms of its benefit to the company?" Yes, actually, and i was managing enough people that it was a dent (IE xx million a year investment in people alone). That company was, in fact, Google. "Was it millions of dollars like Google has spent on this HTTPS thing?" Yes. "To assume that Google is not doing this for profit would be to assume that they are incompetent or derelict in their professional duties, and that seems unlikely to me in this case." I'm going to disagree with you based on my experience above :)

saas_co_de 9y ago
> Yes, actually Can you explain how you spent millions of dollars on something that had no benefit whatsoever for your company? Now, you may have done something that had more ephemeral benefits and did not have directly attributable immediate revenue impacts, but I am pretty sure that it benefited your company somehow, and I am pretty sure that you justified the expense in terms of the benefit to your company. If I am wrong I would be interested to hear the details of this.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  "Can you explain how you spent millions of dollars on something that had no benefit whatsoever for your company?" In what sense? Like why they let me do it? Because they aren't as profit driven as you seem to believe. I'm sure parts are, but not the part i was in. Additionally, the founders and CEO definitely cared more about doing the right thing than trying to eek out another little bit of profit for something. Unfortunately, it's not public in the particular case i'm referring to, so in that case, you'd just have to trust me. I have also managed similarly not-profit driven things, that are public, like election information publication (which was also xx million worth of people). This data and work was explicitly kept away from any profit driven part of the company, and not driven, at any level, by a desire to profit (In this case, eric thought we should do it, as did sergey, and they very much wanted it to be done because it was the right thing to do, and didn't want us to care one whit about either the business or goodwill aspects) I'm sure you will contrive a motive. But you can contrive all you want, it's basically "your random thoughts" against "the people who actually funded and supported it", and i trust them at their words. "Now, you may have done something that had more ephemeral benefits and did not have directly attributable immediate revenue impacts, but I am pretty sure that it benefited your company somehow, and I am pretty sure that you justified the expense in terms of the benefit to your company."" You've moved from claiming, essentially, direct commercial benefit (solidification of monopoly position) to "any benefit at all". I'm pretty sure no matter how i answer you are going to try to contrive benefit out of it. But i asked explicitly (when dealing with the non-public thing), and the answer all the way up to, as far as i know, Larry, was "no, we should do this because it's the right thing to do, we don't care if it benefits us". I did not justify the expense in terms of benefit to my company. As a lawyer, i can also tell you the professional duties you claim are either non-existent or not as absolute as you make them. Google, and pretty much all corporations, are simply not the black and white things you paint them to be. (and also, for the record, i actually very much hate corporatism :P)
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    > As a lawyer, i can also tell you the professional duties you claim are either non-existent or not as absolute as you make them. "under American law we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to account for things properly, so if we were, for example, to just arbitrarily decide to pay a different tax rate than we were required to, a more favourable one for example to a particular country, how would we account for that?" - Eric Schmidt on why Google paid "£3.4m in tax on £3.2bn of sales" (.1%) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/27/google-eric-schmidt-change-law-tax https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/27/google-er...
    - DannyBee 9y ago
      Uh, so? Eric is legally wrong about this[1][2] I'm really unsure what is this comment supposed to add to the discussion. It doesn't respond substantively to any point i made, it's not even relevant to the quote you are responding to, it's not caselaw or legal argumentation, it's a CEO giving a political answer to a question. Is that supposed to be shocking or something? I'm not even sure. Truthfully, it makes it seem like you aren't even trying to have a real discussion, you just want to grind an axe. [1] "While the duty to maximize shareholder value may be a useful shorthand for a corporate manager to think about how to act on a day to day basis, this is not legally required or enforceable …. Under this legal regime, it is not malfeasance for boards or corporate chiefs to make decisions that do not maximize shareholder value." [2] "Contrary to what many believe, U.S. corporate law does not impose any enforceable legal duty on corporate directors or executives of public corporations to maximize profits or share price" (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...) [3] There are only two legal duties here. The duty of care and the duty of loyalty. As I said, neither is about maximization of profits, though you will occasionally find courts with loose language around the duty of loyalty. The duty of loyalty's history is about not making money at the corporations expense - you must put the corporation's interests above your own. Transforming that into a "you must maximize profit at all costs" is ... a pretty far step. Again, 99.99% court cases here, and traditional breach of this duty are about either taking a corporate opportunity for yourself or making self-interested transactions.