[brudgers]

Because Google is amoral - corporate "persons" don't have the free will necessary for meaningfully characterizing them as moral actors - the idea that Google is ontologically good or evil is a category error (given the assumption that good and evil are meaningful terms).

That's not to say that a corporate "person" cannot be used as a tool or means for moral agents to commit acts of kindness or commit harm. But moral responsibility for those acts lies with the moral agents who run the company or otherwise make the decisions which lead to such states of affairs.

There is nothing in the scenario which you describe which is evil so long as one accepts that a corporation maximizing its profits is a good, i.e. characterizes corporate "persons" as moral agents rather than a force which moral agents possessing free will may harness for their acts.

I will add that the fundamental premise of the scenario is that Google would create a walled garden and give it preference over open networks such as the internet when providing information to users of its services.

The application of ethics to such scenarios is left as an exercise for the reader.

[wongjoh]

Sure. This is the classical question about a corporation maximizing profits vs its social responsibility. Furthermore, ethics/moral stand depend on the societal norms. In the scenario I gave, we are looking from the outside -- it may be perfectly "legit" within that society (and in fact, that's how many see it in my actual applied country). But reality remains: a giant with the resources, tenacity, and goal to copy and replace most every other successful company.

So my question remains: what should tech entrepreneurs do in this "imaginary" environment/scenario?