7 ms·

A 'Thank You' from Google

101 points by dkokelley 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
andreyf 16y ago
Also, http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/#tnc http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/#tnc
ck2 16y ago
I know this is a terribly jaded way to look at the world but when I see big corporations boasting of big donations to charity, which have to be only a small portion of their profits, it makes me wonder why they are paying their employees so little or charging their customers too much. Their corporate voice doesn't speak for me and other individuals would have chosen different charities, so why don't they empower more people to make their own donations instead of taking from us and doing it for us in their own name. What if instead Google just doubled the pay for all their employees in India (for example) and allowed those people to put the money back in their own economy as they buy things they need?
- abhaga 16y ago
  If you look at it from the point of view of charities, they might prefer getting a lump sum donation in big amounts rather than a lot of small contributions. First it is less of a hassle. Second, knowing that they have this certain big amount with them, will help them aim for more ambitious causes and plan better. And don't worry about salaries in India. I can tell you that most of the people whom Google or similar companies can pay here, are already well paid and have sufficient disposable incomes for contributing to charities if they so wish.
  - wahnfrieden 16y ago
    Right. Not everyone deserving of aid is employable either.
- dkokelley 16y ago
  I typically favor the 'hands off' approach to social causes. That is, individuals can do more good on their own than benevolent corporations or governments. That said, Google doesn't exist to do good deeds. It is a corporation designed to make a profit by providing a valuable service and charging for it. Donating was not necessary, and I applaud these 'giving back' efforts. I particularly like how it was quantified primarily in terms of number of people affected, instead of amount of money given.
  - joshes 16y ago
    Brin and Page are not exactly the prototypes of profit-seeking corporate overlords, either. This is their type of move. Bravo.
  - ynniv 16y ago
    Personally, I would rather they remove ads from YouTube videos. YouTube is a great channel for learning, but is becoming marginalized by needless, annoying crap popping up. Instead they have done what the rich always do, make a small, visible allocation of their profits to a "cause" that is easily marketed. They will certainly derive more revenue from increased traffic due to this advertisement than it cost them, and they get to feel warm and fuzzy about it at the same time. This is not HN worthy.
- jackolas 16y ago
  Yes, you are jaded. And yes it might make some sense if you were trying to fix the economy. But I'd hedge that these charities will do more to alleviate poverty than Google paying some people more and hoping that something good happens.
  - ynniv 16y ago
    Take a dollar from the middle, and give ten cents to the bottom. This way the top gets to keep 90¢ and look like the hero! To be fair, it's what has always done. But this makes ck2 "jaded"? I am disappointed that so many people agree with you. Maybe the bottom wouldn't be so poor if there were some well off people who lived next to them and could help them out when they really needed it. Moving 90¢ from Bangalore to Tokyo / New York / Los Angeles reduces the local wealth a lot more than sending 10¢ back.
    - mseebach 16y ago
      Except the "taking" part didn't happen. Google (or, in your terminology, "the top") created that value.
    - White_N_Nerdy 16y ago
      "There's enough in the world for everyone's need. There is not enough for everyone's greed." - Ghandi
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Paying your employees more and charging your customers less apparently doesn't look nearly as good as large donations to charity, regardless which helps more. At least in America. Not being a cynic. There are reasons for this. We make a big deal of charity donations in general, and you get to claim a lump-sum. $1 million donated sounds better than 1000 donations of $1 thousand. Edit: there's another upside, too. It's a lot easier to make large profits and then give back what you can later, than it is to figure out what you can afford to give up ahead of time and set a tight budget.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  You're jaded and want to address the problem of rural isolated low-access to education children by giving people in big cities more money? You're jaded by the selfish acts of corporations and yet are encouraging trickle-down in an economy and in reference to a problem that is probably uniquely even less apt to respond to trickle down? Huh.
  - ck2 16y ago
    Yes, giving money (or cutting taxes) to people who are already wealthy is proven not to work (aka "trickle down economics") because they do not need to spend it locally and tend to only save/invest it overseas to their own benefit. However it's also been proven that giving money to people of low income (ie. all the callcenter agents in India that Google and other corporations use) will then tend to spend the money immediately as they have little to no savings and need goods/services right away. This also works for unemployed people in the USA, they tend to spend any funds given to them immediately, locally, which is good for the economy.
- verysimple 16y ago
  Lets say they paid their employees more, charged their clients less and then still gave something to charity. Someone would still be asking the same questions, "howcome they don't give more to employees and charge clients less?" Will there ever be a point at which they're allowed to use their money to give to whom they see fit?
- anto1ne 16y ago
  giving more to employees in India will just help the growing gap between rich and poor, which is a big problem in these countries.
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    So it makes sense then that they should actually pay their employees in India less, to reduce the gap.
- alexqgb 16y ago
  Apparently Coca-Cola did that for years. Not sure if this is still the case, but for a while they gave nothing directly. Instead, they offered a lump sum to their employees to distribute however they saw fit. As a result, there were all sorts of good things happening in and around Atlanta - examples of small amounts going a long way in places where a giant company wouldn't even think to look.
- bradley11 16y ago
  Because to pay one additional dollar to employees they also have to pay the government about one additional dollar in taxes. In contrast, by paying one dollar more to non-profit charities they can pay one dollar less to the government (within limit).
- jrockway 16y ago
  I like it even better when the big corporation "strongly encourages" its employees to donate to some charity, and then the company collects the donations and takes credit in their ads for donating to said charity. At least Google donated their own money.
alanh 16y ago
Erm… I’m only seeing a “loading” throbber. Edit after it becomes clear this is because I don’t have Flash: They are not only blocking out users with Flash disabled and/or not available on their device, but also deaf users — there is no text equivalent provided. There isn’t even an explanation that a plugin is required.
- skymt 16y ago
  You might have Flash or JavaScript disabled: it's a YouTube video.
  - alanh 16y ago
    Flash is disabled (not JS). Boy am I starting to get tired of companies talking about how much they love HTML5 without walking the walk. Google employes Ian Hickson, the “dictator” at HTML5’s helm,† but fails to support <video> with a Flash fallback. It’s really not hard! Adobe is guilty of this hypocrisy; Google is quite guilty… only Apple is mostly walking the walk (you never need Flash for any of their web properties), and increasingly Microsoft (no Flash or Silverlight is needed for http://zoom.it http://zoom.it). Edit: YouTube supporting HTML5 ≠ this Google web page supporting HTML5. And FWIW, even the YouTube HTML5 beta is insufficient — Many times nothing at all will play, even though third-party sites like DetURL or File2HD can find .MP4 files for that video, and the video plays fine on iOS(!). And I’m using Chrome with the plugin completely disabled, for Chrissake — Given there is no technical reason they can’t tell I don’t have Flash, it becomes obvious no one at Google cares about walking the walk. †Dear downvoters: I am not making up, Hixie refers to himself this way. http://adactio.com/journal/1600/ http://adactio.com/journal/1600/
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      Youtube does support HTML5, but it's optional. From your account settings enable it and on any supported videos it'll be used. For me I'm glad it's optional, the versatility of the Flash video player is preferable for me, HTML5 might be fancy schmancy but it sucks right now for features.
    - 16y ago
Swizec 16y ago
To be honest, I want Chrome for a cause to stay. It is one of the most fun dick measuring contests a bunch of web fiends can have. I wonder what this did to Chrome usage ratings? More on topic: how many of these charitable donations have a hidden agenda? Paying for schools in India, carefully nudging them to train engineers, having cheaper employees? etc ...
- jackolas 16y ago
  And to be honest it's a great way to showcase tabs.
  - antimatter15 16y ago
    Not when you hit the 250 tab max halfway through your browsing day.
reason 16y ago
I wish youtube videos streamed just as nicely as this one.
brownleej 16y ago
I'm honestly curious what they mean when they say "Google's customers". Are they referring to Google's _users_, or the much smaller group of people who pay for Google services? This isn't just snark. I think that a corporation's responsibilities to its customers are different than the ones it has to its users, and its relationship to its customers should naturally be different than its relationship to its users. I wonder to what extent this distinction exists in Google's culture. [Edited to fix an error in diction]
- dangrossman 16y ago
  Google customers are the source of Google's profits which is where this donation came from.
- bad_user 16y ago
  They would be stupid to make a distinction. Users of Google's free services may not pay Google directly, but the currency is different and Google relies on both types of customers to stay in business. As for responsibilities, they are the same as for any other company: provide better and better value while staying in business. Companies are not supposed to be socially-responsible, and shouldn't be treated as such.
- axod 16y ago
  The email was sent out to adsense publishers.
antimatter15 16y ago
The URL to the YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU HTML 5 enabled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU&html5=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU&html5=1
foobob 16y ago
20 million. That's less than 0.1% of what Gates donates. That's about 0.01% of Google's market cap. That's about 4.6 work-hours of Google revenues. Google is counting on people not having a feeling for what "million" and "billion" mean, aside from both being big numbers. And part of what was advertised was charities using Google Apps. I like Google, but this feels pretty cynical.
- magicalist 16y ago
  according to http://www.google.org/ http://www.google.org/ they gave "over $100 million in 2009." I'm not sure what this 20 million refers to, but it's not their total giving. also, with Bill Gates you appear to be comparing total donations vs some yearly amount.
ihodes 16y ago
It's sure disheartening to see the majority of comments here say something to the effect of "20 mil is nothing—Google has so much more to give." Well they sure as hell do, but we wouldn't be saying anything if they'd donated nothing. I don't see why it's Google's responsibility to donate a percentage of their income, or donate relative to other large donors. I think it's cool Google donated 20 million. I don't know why it's on HN. I'm not going to take this as an opportunity to bitch about how they could have donated much more.
- anthonycerra 16y ago
  People choose to look at the relative value of money instead of its absolute value. 20 million for Google is nothing - true. However, 20 million as a US currency is huge and can benefit many, many lives. My question for HN is which way do you want to look at it? Also, a question no one is asking: How much is Apple donating?
  - magicalist 16y ago
    as I noted below, according to http://www.google.org/ http://www.google.org/ they gave "over $100 million" in 2009. I think this video came from some specific campaign from google (notice if you go to the youtube page directly, the video is unlisted. also the whole "on behalf of our customers"...what does that even mean?). maybe the OP can give some context?
    - dkokelley 16y ago
      I got an email from Google with a thank you note and link to this video. I can't determine if the 'thanks to you...' is referring to me as a (one time) advertiser or as a regular Google user. Edit (more clarity): Here is the actual email from Google: Dear , Thanks to you, this holiday season Google is able to donate $20 million to charitable organizations around the world. They in turn will help improve the lives of over 50 million people. Click here to see how. Thank you for being a part of what Google is today. All this is possible because of you. Have a wonderful holiday. Google Note that my name was not included in the email. I'm guessing they're missing a record on me.
joshfraser 16y ago
you're welcome :)
ditojim 16y ago
i don't think greedy is ever a word that will be used to describe google. ambitious, yes. greedy, no.
erikb 16y ago
Are there really still people left, who are naive enough to think that charity really is for a good cause? It is basically just another business for rich people/comapanies to move money around. If it would work the way you think it does, why is Africa and South Asia still looking the same it looked 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago?
- dkokelley 16y ago
  This is really something for a separate discussion, but a major cause for the poverty of the regions you mentioned have more to do with social and political troubles than economic issues. All of the money in the world donated to a region where warlords take it all will not make the intended recipients any better off. Also, there is another argument that claims direct aid actually creates dependency, and development stalls because there is no motive to progress. None of those arguments alone should be a reason to restrict your charitable giving, but keep in mind that there are situations in where even the most noble organizations will be helpless to improve a region.
  - erikb 16y ago
    I seriously think the idea of charity is flawed. There are so many things wrong with it, that it's really hard for me to put that into a comment. Another point, quite important and often forgotten, is that people actually think, if they put some money in charity they did a great thing today. With a bright smile they walk on the street of their own city, letting drugs, raping, bad school education, homeless people and so on just happen. But that's okay. They come in heaven now, because they did charity... But hey, when it is a company it must be better. Because they at least themself should know that it actually is a marketing campaign they are doing and not helping people.
- klbarry 16y ago
  As for Africa and South Asia, check out this presentationL http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y.... They don't look nearly the same as thirty years ago!
- 16y ago
mike-cardwell 16y ago
This money is obviously doing a lot of good, but I have to ask why are they making a big song and dance about it? It's the equivalent of me donating 20 bucks to charity and then going around telling everyone. If they were doing it purely for altruistic reasons then they wouldn't even mention it. It definitely has a commercial purpose behind it. It's better than them not doing it, but don't fall into the trap of believing it's purely altruistic. Google employees don't have a higher set of morals than other companies.
- jrockway 16y ago
  The thing is, it doesn't matter. Money donated for ego purpose buys just as many polio vaccines as money donated for strictly self-less purposes. For some reason, we are taught that donating money should be strictly altruistic action and we get upset when someone is doing it for publicity or whatever. But in the end, it doesn't matter; money is money, and if people can feed their egos (or make their company look good), and charities get money, that's fine. Everyone benefits.
White_N_Nerdy 16y ago
Thank You! Here, watch this commercial about how good we are.
oceanician 16y ago
I'm as cynical as the next man, but at the end of the day a charity donation is a good thing. All companies who do it should be congratulated, not winged at. Encourage other companies to do the same.
malloreon 16y ago
As one of Adwords' biggest advertisers, I'd like to thank Google for giving themselves a tax write off instead of giving me a holiday gift this year and last year. It means a lot.

101 points by dkokelley 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

andreyf 16y ago

Also, http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/#tnc http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/#tnc

ck2 16y ago

I know this is a terribly jaded way to look at the world but when I see big corporations boasting of big donations to charity, which have to be only a small portion of their profits, it makes me wonder why they are paying their employees so little or charging their customers too much. Their corporate voice doesn't speak for me and other individuals would have chosen different charities, so why don't they empower more people to make their own donations instead of taking from us and doing it for us in their own name. What if instead Google just doubled the pay for all their employees in India (for example) and allowed those people to put the money back in their own economy as they buy things they need?

abhaga 16y ago
If you look at it from the point of view of charities, they might prefer getting a lump sum donation in big amounts rather than a lot of small contributions. First it is less of a hassle. Second, knowing that they have this certain big amount with them, will help them aim for more ambitious causes and plan better. And don't worry about salaries in India. I can tell you that most of the people whom Google or similar companies can pay here, are already well paid and have sufficient disposable incomes for contributing to charities if they so wish.
- wahnfrieden 16y ago
  Right. Not everyone deserving of aid is employable either.
dkokelley 16y ago
I typically favor the 'hands off' approach to social causes. That is, individuals can do more good on their own than benevolent corporations or governments. That said, Google doesn't exist to do good deeds. It is a corporation designed to make a profit by providing a valuable service and charging for it. Donating was not necessary, and I applaud these 'giving back' efforts. I particularly like how it was quantified primarily in terms of number of people affected, instead of amount of money given.
- joshes 16y ago
  Brin and Page are not exactly the prototypes of profit-seeking corporate overlords, either. This is their type of move. Bravo.
- ynniv 16y ago
  Personally, I would rather they remove ads from YouTube videos. YouTube is a great channel for learning, but is becoming marginalized by needless, annoying crap popping up. Instead they have done what the rich always do, make a small, visible allocation of their profits to a "cause" that is easily marketed. They will certainly derive more revenue from increased traffic due to this advertisement than it cost them, and they get to feel warm and fuzzy about it at the same time. This is not HN worthy.
jackolas 16y ago
Yes, you are jaded. And yes it might make some sense if you were trying to fix the economy. But I'd hedge that these charities will do more to alleviate poverty than Google paying some people more and hoping that something good happens.
- ynniv 16y ago
  Take a dollar from the middle, and give ten cents to the bottom. This way the top gets to keep 90¢ and look like the hero! To be fair, it's what has always done. But this makes ck2 "jaded"? I am disappointed that so many people agree with you. Maybe the bottom wouldn't be so poor if there were some well off people who lived next to them and could help them out when they really needed it. Moving 90¢ from Bangalore to Tokyo / New York / Los Angeles reduces the local wealth a lot more than sending 10¢ back.
  - mseebach 16y ago
    Except the "taking" part didn't happen. Google (or, in your terminology, "the top") created that value.
  - White_N_Nerdy 16y ago
    "There's enough in the world for everyone's need. There is not enough for everyone's greed." - Ghandi
sliverstorm 16y ago
Paying your employees more and charging your customers less apparently doesn't look nearly as good as large donations to charity, regardless which helps more. At least in America. Not being a cynic. There are reasons for this. We make a big deal of charity donations in general, and you get to claim a lump-sum. $1 million donated sounds better than 1000 donations of $1 thousand. Edit: there's another upside, too. It's a lot easier to make large profits and then give back what you can later, than it is to figure out what you can afford to give up ahead of time and set a tight budget.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
You're jaded and want to address the problem of rural isolated low-access to education children by giving people in big cities more money? You're jaded by the selfish acts of corporations and yet are encouraging trickle-down in an economy and in reference to a problem that is probably uniquely even less apt to respond to trickle down? Huh.
- ck2 16y ago
  Yes, giving money (or cutting taxes) to people who are already wealthy is proven not to work (aka "trickle down economics") because they do not need to spend it locally and tend to only save/invest it overseas to their own benefit. However it's also been proven that giving money to people of low income (ie. all the callcenter agents in India that Google and other corporations use) will then tend to spend the money immediately as they have little to no savings and need goods/services right away. This also works for unemployed people in the USA, they tend to spend any funds given to them immediately, locally, which is good for the economy.
verysimple 16y ago
Lets say they paid their employees more, charged their clients less and then still gave something to charity. Someone would still be asking the same questions, "howcome they don't give more to employees and charge clients less?" Will there ever be a point at which they're allowed to use their money to give to whom they see fit?
anto1ne 16y ago
giving more to employees in India will just help the growing gap between rich and poor, which is a big problem in these countries.
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  So it makes sense then that they should actually pay their employees in India less, to reduce the gap.
alexqgb 16y ago
Apparently Coca-Cola did that for years. Not sure if this is still the case, but for a while they gave nothing directly. Instead, they offered a lump sum to their employees to distribute however they saw fit. As a result, there were all sorts of good things happening in and around Atlanta - examples of small amounts going a long way in places where a giant company wouldn't even think to look.
bradley11 16y ago
Because to pay one additional dollar to employees they also have to pay the government about one additional dollar in taxes. In contrast, by paying one dollar more to non-profit charities they can pay one dollar less to the government (within limit).
jrockway 16y ago
I like it even better when the big corporation "strongly encourages" its employees to donate to some charity, and then the company collects the donations and takes credit in their ads for donating to said charity. At least Google donated their own money.

alanh 16y ago

Erm… I’m only seeing a “loading” throbber. Edit after it becomes clear this is because I don’t have Flash: They are not only blocking out users with Flash disabled and/or not available on their device, but also deaf users — there is no text equivalent provided. There isn’t even an explanation that a plugin is required.

skymt 16y ago
You might have Flash or JavaScript disabled: it's a YouTube video.
- alanh 16y ago
  Flash is disabled (not JS). Boy am I starting to get tired of companies talking about how much they love HTML5 without walking the walk. Google employes Ian Hickson, the “dictator” at HTML5’s helm,† but fails to support <video> with a Flash fallback. It’s really not hard! Adobe is guilty of this hypocrisy; Google is quite guilty… only Apple is mostly walking the walk (you never need Flash for any of their web properties), and increasingly Microsoft (no Flash or Silverlight is needed for http://zoom.it http://zoom.it). Edit: YouTube supporting HTML5 ≠ this Google web page supporting HTML5. And FWIW, even the YouTube HTML5 beta is insufficient — Many times nothing at all will play, even though third-party sites like DetURL or File2HD can find .MP4 files for that video, and the video plays fine on iOS(!). And I’m using Chrome with the plugin completely disabled, for Chrissake — Given there is no technical reason they can’t tell I don’t have Flash, it becomes obvious no one at Google cares about walking the walk. †Dear downvoters: I am not making up, Hixie refers to himself this way. http://adactio.com/journal/1600/ http://adactio.com/journal/1600/
  - citricsquid 16y ago
    Youtube does support HTML5, but it's optional. From your account settings enable it and on any supported videos it'll be used. For me I'm glad it's optional, the versatility of the Flash video player is preferable for me, HTML5 might be fancy schmancy but it sucks right now for features.
  - 16y ago

Swizec 16y ago

To be honest, I want Chrome for a cause to stay. It is one of the most fun dick measuring contests a bunch of web fiends can have. I wonder what this did to Chrome usage ratings? More on topic: how many of these charitable donations have a hidden agenda? Paying for schools in India, carefully nudging them to train engineers, having cheaper employees? etc ...

jackolas 16y ago
And to be honest it's a great way to showcase tabs.
- antimatter15 16y ago
  Not when you hit the 250 tab max halfway through your browsing day.

reason 16y ago

I wish youtube videos streamed just as nicely as this one.

brownleej 16y ago

I'm honestly curious what they mean when they say "Google's customers". Are they referring to Google's _users_, or the much smaller group of people who pay for Google services? This isn't just snark. I think that a corporation's responsibilities to its customers are different than the ones it has to its users, and its relationship to its customers should naturally be different than its relationship to its users. I wonder to what extent this distinction exists in Google's culture. [Edited to fix an error in diction]

dangrossman 16y ago
Google customers are the source of Google's profits which is where this donation came from.
bad_user 16y ago
They would be stupid to make a distinction. Users of Google's free services may not pay Google directly, but the currency is different and Google relies on both types of customers to stay in business. As for responsibilities, they are the same as for any other company: provide better and better value while staying in business. Companies are not supposed to be socially-responsible, and shouldn't be treated as such.
axod 16y ago
The email was sent out to adsense publishers.

antimatter15 16y ago

The URL to the YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU HTML 5 enabled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU&html5=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06EAUAi4MU&html5=1

foobob 16y ago

20 million. That's less than 0.1% of what Gates donates. That's about 0.01% of Google's market cap. That's about 4.6 work-hours of Google revenues. Google is counting on people not having a feeling for what "million" and "billion" mean, aside from both being big numbers. And part of what was advertised was charities using Google Apps. I like Google, but this feels pretty cynical.

magicalist 16y ago
according to http://www.google.org/ http://www.google.org/ they gave "over $100 million in 2009." I'm not sure what this 20 million refers to, but it's not their total giving. also, with Bill Gates you appear to be comparing total donations vs some yearly amount.

ihodes 16y ago

It's sure disheartening to see the majority of comments here say something to the effect of "20 mil is nothing—Google has so much more to give." Well they sure as hell do, but we wouldn't be saying anything if they'd donated nothing. I don't see why it's Google's responsibility to donate a percentage of their income, or donate relative to other large donors. I think it's cool Google donated 20 million. I don't know why it's on HN. I'm not going to take this as an opportunity to bitch about how they could have donated much more.

anthonycerra 16y ago
People choose to look at the relative value of money instead of its absolute value. 20 million for Google is nothing - true. However, 20 million as a US currency is huge and can benefit many, many lives. My question for HN is which way do you want to look at it? Also, a question no one is asking: How much is Apple donating?
- magicalist 16y ago
  as I noted below, according to http://www.google.org/ http://www.google.org/ they gave "over $100 million" in 2009. I think this video came from some specific campaign from google (notice if you go to the youtube page directly, the video is unlisted. also the whole "on behalf of our customers"...what does that even mean?). maybe the OP can give some context?
  - dkokelley 16y ago
    I got an email from Google with a thank you note and link to this video. I can't determine if the 'thanks to you...' is referring to me as a (one time) advertiser or as a regular Google user. Edit (more clarity): Here is the actual email from Google: Dear , Thanks to you, this holiday season Google is able to donate $20 million to charitable organizations around the world. They in turn will help improve the lives of over 50 million people. Click here to see how. Thank you for being a part of what Google is today. All this is possible because of you. Have a wonderful holiday. Google Note that my name was not included in the email. I'm guessing they're missing a record on me.

joshfraser 16y ago

you're welcome :)

ditojim 16y ago

i don't think greedy is ever a word that will be used to describe google. ambitious, yes. greedy, no.

erikb 16y ago

Are there really still people left, who are naive enough to think that charity really is for a good cause? It is basically just another business for rich people/comapanies to move money around. If it would work the way you think it does, why is Africa and South Asia still looking the same it looked 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago?

dkokelley 16y ago
This is really something for a separate discussion, but a major cause for the poverty of the regions you mentioned have more to do with social and political troubles than economic issues. All of the money in the world donated to a region where warlords take it all will not make the intended recipients any better off. Also, there is another argument that claims direct aid actually creates dependency, and development stalls because there is no motive to progress. None of those arguments alone should be a reason to restrict your charitable giving, but keep in mind that there are situations in where even the most noble organizations will be helpless to improve a region.
- erikb 16y ago
  I seriously think the idea of charity is flawed. There are so many things wrong with it, that it's really hard for me to put that into a comment. Another point, quite important and often forgotten, is that people actually think, if they put some money in charity they did a great thing today. With a bright smile they walk on the street of their own city, letting drugs, raping, bad school education, homeless people and so on just happen. But that's okay. They come in heaven now, because they did charity... But hey, when it is a company it must be better. Because they at least themself should know that it actually is a marketing campaign they are doing and not helping people.
klbarry 16y ago
As for Africa and South Asia, check out this presentationL http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y.... They don't look nearly the same as thirty years ago!
16y ago

mike-cardwell 16y ago

This money is obviously doing a lot of good, but I have to ask why are they making a big song and dance about it? It's the equivalent of me donating 20 bucks to charity and then going around telling everyone. If they were doing it purely for altruistic reasons then they wouldn't even mention it. It definitely has a commercial purpose behind it. It's better than them not doing it, but don't fall into the trap of believing it's purely altruistic. Google employees don't have a higher set of morals than other companies.

jrockway 16y ago
The thing is, it doesn't matter. Money donated for ego purpose buys just as many polio vaccines as money donated for strictly self-less purposes. For some reason, we are taught that donating money should be strictly altruistic action and we get upset when someone is doing it for publicity or whatever. But in the end, it doesn't matter; money is money, and if people can feed their egos (or make their company look good), and charities get money, that's fine. Everyone benefits.

White_N_Nerdy 16y ago

Thank You! Here, watch this commercial about how good we are.

oceanician 16y ago

I'm as cynical as the next man, but at the end of the day a charity donation is a good thing. All companies who do it should be congratulated, not winged at. Encourage other companies to do the same.

malloreon 16y ago

As one of Adwords' biggest advertisers, I'd like to thank Google for giving themselves a tax write off instead of giving me a holiday gift this year and last year. It means a lot.