Google is a publicly traded company, their first duty is to their share holders. If a reporter chooses goes to jail that's up to him, it's his decision to make. It's not Google's money to throw away.
Saying we can't ever blame a company for doing something, because the express purpose of a company is increasing shareholder value, is such an absurd line of reasoning. Then blame the shareholders instead of the company!
At some point there's always people making decisions. The abstract soulless entity "Google" may not have any moral responsibilities, but Google's owners do.
Even if this is entirely true, it is quite possible that fighting the law more aggressively may be in their share holders best long-term interest. An excessive focus on the extremely short term has caused many businesses quite a lot of trouble over the last century. For a really interesting analysis of the decline of a machine-tool manufacturing company (the most thorough discussion of the issues I know of) see Max Holland's When the Machine Stopped, about the decline and collapse of Burgmaster, a mid-century "start-up" by an inventor.
I meant not throwing away money in respect to suggestions that they out right refuse a legal order. Not that they hire more lawyers to attempt to change that legal order.
I was talking about the prospect of them breaking the law.
This is true, but you're assuming that the shareholder's only interest is financial. I daresay that at least some of them bought those shares because they believe in the "do no evil" motto, and believe that Google can make the world better.
To this extent, doing the right thing despite monetary costs may be what the shareholders want.
Their responsibility is towards shareholders with voting rights. As far as I know, the voting rights are skewed in favour of Brin and Page. If you don't have a significant voting right, you are a mute spectator at best and if you don't like what they're doing, all you can do is GTFO.
>Google is a publicly traded company, their first duty is to their share holders.
I'm a shareholder. It's not much, but it does imply a tiny bit of ownership. And so, as a shareholder, I want Google to be totally righteous even at the risk of going bankrupt.
That's easy to say when you only have a small amount of money invested in ownership. If you had a lot more riding on this, you might take the opposite position. Not saying your current one isn't correct, but still...
