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> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. This is because of the ethics those same employees are complaining about.

> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. This is because of the ethics those same employees are complaining about. An ethical Google makes less money, employees will necessarily have to be paid less, they will then go on to the next unethical company that can pay them more. It is completely ridiculous to bring home a huge paycheck and complain about the very thing that enables that huge paycheck. They want a world where they make the same $$ at ethical as non-ethical companies. It doesn't work that way. If they can't give a shit enough about their own beliefs to sacrifice something - $$ vs ethics -- then how can they expect a faceless corporation to give a shit enough about that person's beliefs to make that sacrifice? It's a completely, ridiculously, unrealistic expectation.

dbspin 7y ago
It's difficult if not impossible to quantify, but I'd suggest that google has lost an enormous amount of goodwill through their departure from 'don't be evil'. It's up there with the goodwill they've lost gaining a reputation for abandoning products. How much that filters down to the adsense coalface is debatable. But it absolutely affects the choices of top talent about where to work. Facebook is notorious among my coder friends for being a place that has to pay a large premium to attract talent, because of the shame of working for such an unethical company. No company is bigger than its reputation - certainly not a company that serves people, rather than industry. Part of what made Google so popular - so desirous as a place to work and research, was a sense that many of their policies, e.g.: the embrace of open source technologies, open standards for the web etc; were actively good. This belief helped google mindshare enormously. It's absence cannot help but hurt the company in the long term, in concrete financial terms. What they stand to gain in short term embrace of military contracts etc, will cost them not only their reputation, but their place as a major innovator. If it hasn't already, that is.

dbspin 7y ago

It's difficult if not impossible to quantify, but I'd suggest that google has lost an enormous amount of goodwill through their departure from 'don't be evil'. It's up there with the goodwill they've lost gaining a reputation for abandoning products. How much that filters down to the adsense coalface is debatable. But it absolutely affects the choices of top talent about where to work. Facebook is notorious among my coder friends for being a place that has to pay a large premium to attract talent, because of the shame of working for such an unethical company. No company is bigger than its reputation - certainly not a company that serves people, rather than industry. Part of what made Google so popular - so desirous as a place to work and research, was a sense that many of their policies, e.g.: the embrace of open source technologies, open standards for the web etc; were actively good. This belief helped google mindshare enormously. It's absence cannot help but hurt the company in the long term, in concrete financial terms. What they stand to gain in short term embrace of military contracts etc, will cost them not only their reputation, but their place as a major innovator. If it hasn't already, that is.