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For your statement to be relevant, you'd have to show that if they were concerned about stakeholders other than shareholders, they would have acted differently.

For your statement to be relevant, you'd have to show that if they were concerned about stakeholders other than shareholders, they would have acted differently. That's not self-evident. It's not clear that this suit would have a material benefit for any stakeholders - including users - until now. It would only do slightly more than the current disclosure to expose the issue of such requests, and it would incur significant risk and cost in return. Given the recent controversy, I'd say this suit now benefits Google employees and shareholders, but I'm not sure it really does a lot for customers in reality. Let's say Google wins the right to disclose the exact number of requests instead of the range it's been reporting. Will that really materially improve the situation for users?

triplesec 13y ago
I do not see how your points are relevant to my argument. Not everything needs material benefit. Symbolic benefit can be as structurally useful and beneficial as a countable material benefit. For if a powerful set of companies acts, the power relationship with the government (and consumers, not always beneficially of course) then changes. the whole point is that Google did't ask before, so the benefit is less than it would have been had they (and others) acted earlier. I am suggesting this is because of a lack of real stakeholder accountability. The benefit to users now is still appreciable, even though they weren't looking after their customers' interests as strongly as perhaps they might have in another era. Relevance to what? This is a most pertinent issue with respect to the actions of executives of a large business. If executives are competent, then if their concerns are broader, they will act. And there is certainly no requirement for me to demonstrate this in conversation such as this. Your statement appears to commit a burden of proof fallacy.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  And the point I'm making (which you seem to miss) is that the value of taking this step has actually risen. Prior to PRISM, if Google did this, it would incur similar risks/costs but only a limited number of people would care. Post-PRISM, when it's a national issue, the PR benefit for it has risen tenfold, while none of the other prior benefits have decreased. Regardless of how they're prioritizing stakeholders, the overall balance of risk/reward has changed drastically, so it doesn't tell you much about which stakeholders were prioritized.

triplesec 13y ago

I do not see how your points are relevant to my argument. Not everything needs material benefit. Symbolic benefit can be as structurally useful and beneficial as a countable material benefit. For if a powerful set of companies acts, the power relationship with the government (and consumers, not always beneficially of course) then changes. the whole point is that Google did't ask before, so the benefit is less than it would have been had they (and others) acted earlier. I am suggesting this is because of a lack of real stakeholder accountability. The benefit to users now is still appreciable, even though they weren't looking after their customers' interests as strongly as perhaps they might have in another era. Relevance to what? This is a most pertinent issue with respect to the actions of executives of a large business. If executives are competent, then if their concerns are broader, they will act. And there is certainly no requirement for me to demonstrate this in conversation such as this. Your statement appears to commit a burden of proof fallacy.

tomkarlo 13y ago
And the point I'm making (which you seem to miss) is that the value of taking this step has actually risen. Prior to PRISM, if Google did this, it would incur similar risks/costs but only a limited number of people would care. Post-PRISM, when it's a national issue, the PR benefit for it has risen tenfold, while none of the other prior benefits have decreased. Regardless of how they're prioritizing stakeholders, the overall balance of risk/reward has changed drastically, so it doesn't tell you much about which stakeholders were prioritized.