Google Shareholder Proposal to Resist Censorship

buxton2k writes "Slashdot has had plenty of stories about technology companies like Google kowtowing to repressive political regimes such as China's. I'm an (extremely) small shareholder in Google, and I looked at their proxy statement today. Most of the time, shareholders' meetings don't deal with anything other than rubber-stamping the board of directors, but Google's upcoming meeting has a interesting shareholder proposal dealing with free speech and censorship to be voted on at the May 10 meeting."

Comments

Re:Maybe I can start to trust Google again?

[morgan_greywolf]

I think I'll go home and cry for a bit. I mean, I try to be positive. I don't want to be a bitter old man. But really, the board wants to be more evil? Could it at least be a big shareholder who's voice matters that's putting this out there? Can I have a happy moment?

You might want to try some anti-depressants. ;)

Seriously, the shareholder referendum, if approved, would basically tie Google's hands in regards to dealing with an oppressive regime such as China -- it would leave them no option, even if say, agents of the U.S. federal government came to them and said something like "Don't rock the boat. We're working on a strategy here and if you make noise, you'll spoil the whole thing."

Not that I'm implying this has ever happened or anything...

Re:Maybe I can start to trust Google again?

[magarity]

There's no such law to that effect. But there is plenty of tort.

Without the board, not much chance.

[Kadin2048]

This thing doesn't stand a chance.

I've been a shareholder in a bunch of fairly big tech companies (which is not to say that I've been a big shareholder) and in only one case have I ever seen a shareholder resolution unsupported by a company's board actually pass -- and that fairly recently and was widely supported by a lot of big institutional investors (who presumably only care about their ROI, and not how the money is made). (This is excepting hostile takeover actions, I'm referring only to things in the normal course of business.)

I don't know precisely how many shares of Google stock is held by the board, but I'm going to bet that it's a lot, if not a majority outright, meaning that it's probably sunk without them from the get-go.

And, like it or not, most of the big shareholders of any publicly-held corporations are going to be pension and mutual funds, investment banks, and other companies -- not the sort of entities that are generally swayed by feel-good rhetoric; they're not interested in whether Google oppresses Chinese people, only whether said oppression is profitable (and legal, because its legality directly impacts its future profitability).

I appreciate the efforts of people pushing these resolutions, but I think that if we want to change the behavior of our corporations abroad, the change needs to be legislative, so that it wouldn't adversely impact "good" companies by making them less competitive relative to "bad" ones -- which unfortunately means it would need to be via that sausage-factory we have in Washington, which given its propensity for fucking up everything it touches, is probably a Bad Idea overall.

Re:Evil will always win...

[drinkypoo]

On the other hand, a "good" company that basically says, "we will do no evil... unless we're breaking the law by doing good".

Given that the law is often evil (like laws imposing segregation, or laws criminalizing victimless crimes) this is no useful metric whatsoever.

If it's illegal to give a "western" haircut in Iran, and women who wear a leg-revealing outfit can be whipped for it, then it's easy to see that the law itself can be evil.