[TheOtherHobbes]

Google has legal personhood, but as a corporation its ethical responsibilities are much looser than those of an individual, and it's extremely hard to win a criminal case against a corporation even when its agents and representatives act in ways that would be criminal if they happened in a non-corporate context.

The law - in practice - is heavily weighted towards giving corporations a pass for criminal behaviour.

If the behaviour is really egregious and lobbying is light really bad cases may lead to changes in regulation.

But generally the worst that happens is a corporation can be sued for harm in a civil suit and penalties are purely financial.

You see this over and over in finance. Banks are regularly pulled up for fraud, insider dealing, money laundering, and so on. Individuals - mostly low/mid ranking - sometimes go to jail. But banks as a whole are hardly ever shut down, and the worst offenders almost never make any serious effort to clean up their culture.

[autoexec]

When HSBC was caught knowingly laundering money for terrorists, cartels, and drug dealers all they had to do was apologize and hand the US government a cut of the action. It really seems less like the action of a justice system and more like a racketeering. Corporations really need to be reined in, but it's hard to find a politician willing to do it when they're all getting their pockets stuffed with corporate cash.

[bluefirebrand]

> as a corporation its ethical responsibilities are much looser than those of an individual

This seems ass backwards