It isn't because of the MBAs or because of the need to cut costs or whatever. It is to do with the employees too. If you start a company saying that you are ver

It isn't because of the MBAs or because of the need to cut costs or whatever. It is to do with the employees too. If you start a company saying that you are very idealistic, you attract idealistic people (and btw, most companies say this because it is what young people want to hear). But the reality of being a human is that we have a habit of believing in our own honesty/goodness, whatever the actual content of our actions. Another good example was Obama (or perhaps Blair in the UK)...this kind of euphoric self-regard happens in other non-corporate contexts. Being human is thinking that "everything has changed now" , until you get old enough to realise nothing ever changes, and then the people who are saying "everything has changed now" again think you are too old and decrepit to listen to. It is eternal (this kind of fraud is a necessary component of capital markets). The stuff around Google is, however, particularly funny. The founders rhetoric is totally empty (Larry Page appears to be someone whose only distinguishing feature is supreme and total self-confidence). They have a rapacious monopoly which, by exploiting defects in corporate governance, they use to fund a bureaucracy of pet projects/niche interests of academics. You can dress it up any way you want (I can see why academics wanted to love Google, free money with no oversight) but it is still ultimately based on poor ethics (weak corporate governance, no oversight, stealing money from shareholders). Classic SV (wanting the luxury of making tons of easy money very fast AND the moral high ground).