[jrockway]

Hypothetical: If an employee in McDonald's overcharges all the customers do you think that McDonald's/the franchisee is completely devoid of responsibility because it was "just an employee"?

That's a good example. But there's a difference between harming your customers and harming your competitors. In the case of McDonalds' hypothetical actions, the solution is to give your customers their money back and a few free burgers. But what can Google do to make up for their mistake here? Go back in time and not hire the individuals that fucked up?

[heresy]

It's fairly obvious what they should do: apologise publicly and to the people who they misrepresented themselves to.

Not in the Anglosphere where the actual people affected will never know of their wrongdoing.

Not throw their hands up in the air and blame human nature, sorry for the inconvenience.

Every act like this where they do not take a principled stand, dilutes the value of that Don't Be Evil motto a little more, until one day it will essentially be meaningless.

[mvgoogler]

Can we get a little perspective? It's been less than a day since this came to light.

How about giving the people who are investigating a reasonable amount of time to investigate what happened, ferret out who is responsible and and figure out how best to move forward?