NYT: Is a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing? (Google)

[DeepModem Mom]

Is a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing?
By AMY HARMON

Published: May 2, 2004


In the letter last Thursday that announced their plans to sell shares to the public, Google's founders were not bashful about the role they see for their company in the information utopia they hope to build.

"Searching and organizing all the world's information," the letter stated, is "an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good."

That company would, of course, be Google, which in the five years since it was founded by two Stanford graduate students has won 65 million users and turned "googling" into a verb. In Silicon Valley, the company is revered for putting its mission before immediate financial gain.

But will Google be able to adhere to its famous corporate ethos, "don't do evil," with its role as the Internet's chief gatekeeper bolstered by the several billion dollars a stock sale is expected to raise? Supporters and critics alike agree that the public would do well to scrutinize the effects of Google's outsize influence, whether or not it adheres to its promises of trustworthiness.

"Google's greatest challenge, beyond innovation or competition, is what to do with the gift of power that the culture has bestowed on them," said John Battelle, a media consultant who is writing a book about searching the Internet....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/weekinreview/02harm.html