| I look at the money. Google made $10 billion last year. In a cyber-war, how much would the Kremlin pay to disrupt every Chinese WiFi network to which an Android device has a current password? In a shooting war, how much would the US pay? Keep in mind that the modern battlefield increasingly uses ordinary data devices particularly in counter-insurgency operations. Jim McDonnell, Donald Douglas, Jack Northrup and Leroy Grumman did not start out as defense contractors. They diversified their corporations when voluntarily seizing the opportunity was a good alternative to the threat of compulsion during the Second World War. This may in fact be the one time that the rules are different. But there's very little historical precedent upon which to premise such a belief. GM produces military vehicles. Westinghouse and GE produce powerplants for ballistic missile submarines. [edit] The question of how plaintext leads directly to Google profits remains unaddressed. It is not as if Android users can recover their passwords by calling up Google customer service. On the other hand, storing passwords in plain text is usually a decision made to facilitate requests from a company's customers. Asking who constitutes Google's customers is a reasonable place to start when inferring motives.[/edit] |
I'm serious: You need to consider the way Google is run before deciding if any of these theories are plausible.
This is a company which has a history of spurning money-making opportunities in favor of some higher ideal (often times to the chagrin of business-minded types within the company). To give a few examples: Licensing Android, complying with China, accepting paid placements, etc.
You can argue each of those decisions was actually more profitable for Google in the end. And that's the point: Google would not make $10B next year if they sold out their users to the Kremlin this year.