Google: Ethical or Evil?

Google is a company that was conceptualized in a dorm room by two Stanford University college students in 1996 (Arnold, 2005, p. 1) and has morphed into one of the greatest technological powerhouses in operation today. What began as merely a means to analyze and categorize Web sites according to their relevance has developed into a vast library of widely utilized resources, including email servicing, calendaring, instant messaging and photo editing, just to reference a few. Recent statistics collected by SearchEngineWatch.com reflects that of the 10 billion searches performed within the United States during the month of February, 2008, an impressive 5.9 billion of them were executed by Google (Burns, 2008). Rated as Fortune Magazine’s top American company to work for in both 2007 (“100 Best”, 2007)and 2008 (“100 Best”, 2008), Google obviously has curbed the market on fair and friendly treatment of its employees. But how does it measure up when one considers the ethics in relation to its business practices? The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the ethical concerns specific to privacy faced by this herculean computing company and to determine the effectiveness of their treatment of these issues.

Google opens their corporate code of ethics with a simple sentence - “Don’t be evil” (Google Code of Conduct, ¶1). This statement is consistent with the theory of virtue ethics, placing emphasis on the importance of developing to the highest potential. They may not necessarily be considered evil, but Google does engage in practices that are certainly vague and could be considered disreputable. Google’s questionable corporate policies in relation to privacy have long been a subject of contention amongst consumer privacy groups and computing organizations.

Google’s privacy policy relies strongly on the impression that everything they do is for the sole purpose of improving service. Multiple references are made to their goal of improved service