Yeah...that's silly. If that were the case, you'd see a lot more patent trolls and Captain-Planet-villain-style polluting, for just a start. Being a public com

Yeah...that's silly. If that were the case, you'd see a lot more patent trolls and Captain-Planet-villain-style polluting, for just a start. Being a public company means there is pressure on you to be profitable (and pressure for other dumb things...see: minority shareholder demands when Steve Jobs was sick), yes, but the power shareholders and charters wield aren't that strong. People actually talk about this wrt Apple all the time when they talk about all the crap products Apple doesn't release and markets Apple doesn't enter to make sure they do right by what they do release and serve the markets they do enter. Even if you take a simplistic view of "businesses exist to maximize profit", there are a ton of secondary effects you need to worry about (dilution of brand, perception by the public, narrative for the media, the momentum your workforce feels, alienation of partners, etc, etc, etc). You're basically talking "maximize short term profits", which Apple has already shown they're willing to somewhat forgo in exchange for (massive) longterm gains.