[haberman]

People like to say this, maybe believing it fulfills some deep-seated need for cynicism, or makes the speaker feel wise and worldly. But what is your actual argument in support of this? Just saying it does not make it true.

If profit is the only motivation for decisions at Google, why did it pull out of China? I'm sure you're cynical and wise about that too, but here's what I can tell you. I saw Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-br...) and he got fiery and emotional about it. This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.

This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.

[throwaway32]

I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a corporation, and not a charity.

I refer you to the comment above by jey

  What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual 
  component humans want.

Although Sergey is an obviously important influence at Google, he is not Google.

[haberman]

You said profit was the "first" motivation. You haven't even justified that. Saying that a corporation has to at least break even to avoid being a charity is a far cry from your previous grandstanding. Just because a corporation has to make money doesn't mean that money is the "first" motivation for every decision. It doesn't explain why Google (not Sergey, Google) pulled out of China.

[timr]

Um...they chose to go into China in the first place, and they didn't do it for charity work. A lot of people thought that was pretty evil.

In any case, the parent doesn't have to justify anything, because he's stating a relatively well-known argument: in the US, there's an obligation for corporate executives to maximize shareholder value. This point is debated (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/corp...), but not to the extent that you're claiming.

[danssig]

They pulled out of China because the government was hacking them! Do you think they had some knight-in-shining-armour reason? That was all just PR.

[kelnos]

I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a corporation, and not a charity.

Not necessarily. To parrot one of the other posters here: saying it doesn't make it true.

You could also argue that being a charity would be a very slow and inefficient means to achieving many of the things Google has set out to do. Being a for-profit corp gets them there faster and with fewer distractions not core to their purpose. I'd even venture to guess that it wouldn't be possible for Google to do what it does as a non-profit.

Sure, profit is a motivation, but it's certainly not the only (or even necessarily primary) motivation.

[TeMPOraL]

An interesting take on the subject by pg:

http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

"That was a surprising realization. Companies often claim to be benevolent, but it was surprising to realize there were purely benevolent projects that had to be embodied as companies to work."

[danssig]

>why did it pull out of China?

Do you mean "why did they make a big rant about pulling out of China and then not actually do it until they were literally cyber-attacked by the government"? Google was never all that big in China anyway. I'm sure their whole strategy around this was to get gullible people to buy into the "Don't do evil" nonsense.

>Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview and he got fiery and emotional about it.

Yea? So do politicians. Very passionate about what they're talking about until it comes time to vote. Then they follow their wallets.

>This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.

I know plenty of people who grew up in the Soviet Union. What exactly do you think goes on there that makes the "lucky few" who escape want to change the world? Maybe it did have some profound effect on him but it sounds more likely to be simple positioning. Getting people to think he really cares will cause them to defend him every time his company betrays that trust.

>This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.

It may well be old and tired but it's how the world works. The only thing a CEO can get in trouble for not doing is increasing share holder value.

You've been conned.