CNBC: Poking at the Google
May 24, 2018
CNBC has become one of the more interesting outlets of “real” news. (Just joking.) I did spot a headline which lured me to click. Here is the gem:
Larry Page’s Silence Speaks Volumes as Alphabet Faces One Ethical Crisis after Another
Now I am old fashioned and like to have terms defined. CNBC does not fool around with that waste of time. But here’s a working definition of “ethics” which provides me with some context:
moral principles that govern a person’s behavior
A more beefy definition can be absorbed from Spinoza’s Ethics available at this link.
The CNBC write up asserts:
Page should take more time to communicate with stakeholders beyond the confines of the company’s walls.
CNBC notes that Mr. Page and presumably his fellow traveler Sergey Brin, have organized the Google so that neither has to “talk” unless they want to. Outputs from the Google Alphabet construct come from deputies.
I also noted this statement:
Page is the chief executive of a $740 billion conglomerate whose main division, Google, has a mission statement to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s precisely what people are concerned about — the responsibility that comes with collecting, storing and analyzing massive amounts of information. How should that information be used? Who gets to decide? Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have so far borne the brunt of the rising public concern over these questions, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica data leak and that firm’s connections to President Trump. But insiders tell us that a lot of people at Google — which collects just as much or more information than Facebook — are scared of being dragged through the mud next.
Great stuff with a socko closer: “Is he worried?”
Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2018
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
