[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.