Google - lessons in ethics

This post relates to the theory that business can and do make ethical decisions or morals in today's world of business, although the focus is just one company, you could easily remove and replace the name with so many others, especially the other "giant" tech's you all love and hate, maybe I will discuss them in the future.

Google has famously been labelled with "don't do evil" known as their mantra, the company so common to the average person they are now an official verb in the English language.  They are a company trying to hold an ideology whilst conducting business.  Google like all companies are in business to make money, end of argument, stakeholders (shareholders) invest money in the aim to achieve more wealth, so can any company become truly ethical?  Each and every size of businesses have their own dilemmas and although Google are now one of the largest companies in the world they started with just 2 students (Page & Brin) and a mission, they had no financial plan, they were led by something higher, science.  So how did they get so big and what's happened to them that's worth writing about.

Google wanted to make search easier, be the best, but that was achieved that many years ago, check out search engine ranking stats - so mission over? No they have expanded into so many areas, exciting, useful and addictive they may seem, but they faced challenges (China; patent claims,court cases).  Maybe business and life is a balance, they do so much good with providing free services and helping science with research and development, but many people would argue there is a price to pay for all this good. Whether they direct advertising at you or store vital data on you, you are ultimately sacrificing your privacy to attain something, ask yourself if you would do the same if you were in an average shop.   Everyone single person who has using Google search has helped Google get richer from advertising, which is their core revenue (was over 90% of their revenue).  So are Google still ethical to make billions which could be said is merely a bye product of their main service (search). Oh, but wait non profit companies like Mozilla rely on Google for revenue, since they pay them to be their default search engine on their Firefox browser, and Mozilla could suffer financial hardship without this relationship. A moral dilemma is proposed here, do you forsake advertisers the right to push their products in your face, for Google to earn money, for Google to collect and quantify data on your habits and other third parties like the Mozilla foundation.  Are you maybe confusing ethics with morals?

It would be hard to see the current industry and technological world without Google, there work with autonomous cars is enlightening and fresh, a great concept that finally proved its worth in society.  A leader in the  search sector and collaboration tolls second to none, considering the cost (free).  So that's a lot of good and therefore ethical behaviour so all the more reason to support them, but what about their purchase of Motorola?  This former mobile phone giant had so many useful patents, Google snapped it up to take advantage of them.  You see their reasoning after losing court battles that mean they have to pay Microsoft each time an android device is sold, ouch!  Google like so many other technology companies using the digital act's to protect their products fall under a very different system to the old fashioned analogue world of patents.  Understanding the basics of digital patents can seem confusing and obviously why so many cases are drawn out so long through international courts.  Google is suffering for not putting in place legal contracts for its use of the java language when it first introduced the android operating system, and boy, are they now suffering for the indecision of the past (billion pound lawsuits from Oracle).  Were they negligent, stupid, unethical for using other peoples ideas/code and not putting pen to paper, is this not just theft, in business there is no gentleman's handshake, there is only evidence and contracts.

Google have not always been honest either, when assimilating content for their "maps" application they inadvertently collected data from unsecured wifi networks, which resulted in a fine.  A reason why the us congress have wrote to Google expressing concerns over privacy settings for their next endeavour, the Google glasses. Looking back over history Google could end up being the enemy, the beast they tried to avoid and piping out competition unfairly.  Recently they are trying to bundle third party apps direct in the Android phones, so they are native to the smart phone rather than an option able download.  It is decisions like these that could lead to anti-competitive behaviour and possible legal issues, remember Microsoft (Internet explorer) anyone?  Google have not always behaved in an ethical manner according to British society and the legal system here.  Many headlines have discussed how such businesses are managing to pay so little tax in the UK despite prolific profits, all down to different and lower taxation rules in nations close by.  Clever minds saving money or tax avoidance, either way, not popular in today's society, does the average employed worker have options in which country to pay their taxes?

Maybe karma will settle this dilemma in the end or help you in your pursuit ethical decision making?  All I know is ethics and business are separate sides of the coin, you flip and interchange between the two (mainly on the ethical side but with occasional slips to the other side).  Utilitarians may say Google help the greater good and therefore have made sound ethical progress, but who and what should be sacrificed for this and why?  Ethics are subjective and therefore open to opinion, you may think you have the right intentions but who is to say?  There is no finite rule, no set of laws, you may even argue ethics do not exist? 
Remove yourself from the world of bias, from business, do not consider comparisons with similar businesses, instead look impartially, that's the best you can do, you are only human, and oh, don't do evil!!!