Google's slippery slope

Much has been made of Google's new PAC recently. On one hand, it's to be expected. Politicians sue Google for child porn with no evidence. They support telcos' demands that they be allowed to start charging companies like Google for the amount of traffic sent over their precious phone lines. Google will someday be facing anti-trust suits. What choice does the company have?

Still, it's a shame. Sergey and Larry wanted to stay out of politics. They see it as a corrupt system, and certainly PACs are the most corrupting part of the system. This is a black diamond slippery slope.

Sergey and Larry are avowed Democrats. When Larry's father died a few years ago, the family requested that people make donations to the Democratic party in lieu of sending flowers. Sergey and Larry hired like-minded people at Google. Well over 90% of political contributions made by Google employees have gone to Democrats. Now the company has to hire Republican lobbyists and donate to Republican candidates in order to keep them on Google's side. It's not that Republicans are any more evil than Democrats, but Sergey and Larry are clearly going against their personal ideals in making this move. Like biting the bullet and setting up shop in China.

I had a conversation a few years ago with a Silicon Valley exec who insisted that Google's ideals would have to suffer once it went public. The pressure from Wall Street is too great. The need to compromise search results in order to favor revenues and keep the Board and partners satisfied becomes overwhelming. I argued against the idea, for the simple reason that it seemed to me that Google's idealism works. It gives better search results, gets people to trust Google, keeps the focus on customers rather than on profits, and that focus results in more profits.

But maybe the exec was right. That saddens me. What kind of an indictment of capitalism is it to say that you cannot be a successful capitalist and maintain your ideals? Does every politician have to become corrupt, does every capitalist have to be driven by greed? There's something wrong with a world in which that's true.

Maybe it's why I'm too soft on Google. I want to believe that an honest, idealistic company can exist, can thrive. Despite my baser instincts, I'm rooting for Google to prove the skeptics wrong.