Don’t Be Evil
Here’s something nice for y’all:
The custodians of five New York pension funds, being Google shareholders, ask for the company to make policies to counteract censorship in nations such as China and Iran among many others.
I think I was talking to someone this past weekend about Google’s move away from their pre-IPO corporate tenet of “Don’t Be Evil.” After going public, they struck that phrase from their mission statement. It seemed rather telling of the ways in which being beholden to stock holders can turn a good company bad. Google ostensibly could no longer have a phrase like “Don’t Be Evil” as a guiding principle because… I don’t really know why. The SEC would get upset? A stockholder would be offended? I’m not really sure.
But this is one of those stories that gives me a glimmer of hope. As the first poster 1 on this article points out, the fund performing this request holds somewhere around 0.15% of Google’s stock. That is nowhere near being a significant voting block. But it’s great to see that at least one relatively large holder is interested in using it as something more than just an income generator. If Google can no longer promise to not be evil because their shareholders may or may not desire evil, I’m glad that at least one of the few that feels differently is using their voice to express an interest in the public good.
Originally published at Roy Huggins Says Stuff. You can comment here or there.