Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard of living for everyone.
Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more vertically integrated.
But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock.
If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think its right.
(I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates me).
Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that.
Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.
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Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard of living for everyone.
Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more vertically integrated.
But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock.
If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think its right.
(I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates me).
Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that.
Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.
With Android, they're preventing someone else from locking down smartphones and getting in the way of Google's advertising business.
I think you mean beneficiary, not benefactor.
yup you are right, sorry