It's sad: Google has (had?) all the ingredients needed to make an absolutely amazing tech company, but instead they've been consistently shooting themselves in the foot for at least a half-decade. They've had oodles of money, brilliant developers, majority stock ownership by the founders (to avoid being completely beholden to shareholders and their short-term interests), lots of goodwill and a great image at the beginning, and they're just squandering it all with terrible leadership.
Not quite - just because the founders have majority control doesn't mean that the BS financial duty "laws" don't apply to the company executives. They have a duty to all the shareholders, not just the controlling ones.
The leading statement of the law's view on corporate social responsibility goes back to Dodge v. Ford Motor Co, a 1919 decision that held that "a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." That case — in which Henry Ford was challenged by shareholders when he tried to reduce car prices at their expense — also established that "it is not within the lawful powers of a board of directors to shape and conduct the affairs of a corporation for the merely incidental benefit of shareholders and for the primary purpose of benefiting others."
Despite contrary claims by some academics and Occupy Wall Street-type partisans, this remains the law today. A 2010 decision, for example, eBay Domestic Holdings Inc. v. Newmark, held that corporate directors are bound by "fiduciary duties and standards" which include "acting to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of its stockholders."
Producing a return doesn’t imply maximizing that return. Short-term profit maximization may actually be detrimental to long-term success. People also buy stocks because they believe in what the company does in terms of meaningfulness, and that meaningfulness tends to decline when trying to maximize profits.