Is a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing?

Is Google, the ubiquitous search-engine website, a completely neutral resource for users worldwide? The corporate motto of the company is “don’t do evil,” but as reporter Amy Harmon of the New York Times writes, Google is so influential that questions of morality are difficult to address. Rankings in search results, for example, can make or break small businesses selling through the internet. Companies often design websites to do well on Google. In addition, governments can put enormous pressure on Google to censor hate sites, effectively excommunicating them from the internet. While it is perhaps morally repugnant to search for “Jew” and come up with an anti-Semitic website at the top of the page, the prospect of excessive control and sanitization of the internet could be even more alarming. "Google serves such an important gatekeeping role that its decisions have implications for speech and the exchange of ideas," says Mr. Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard Law School. "Imagine John Ashcroft calling Google and saying, 'Get rid of that Web site.'" As it makes its debut on the stock market, the world’s largest search-engine must pioneer an unexplored territory of internet ethics, balancing the interests and values of internet users around the globe. – YaleGlobal