Google's Shareholders Vote Against Human Rights

yo_cruyff notes a Computerworld article on Google's recent annual shareholder meeting, which was dominated by argument over the company's human rights policies. Google's shareholders, on advice from their board, have voted down two proposals on Thursday that would have compelled Google to change its policies. "Google [has been] coming under fire for operating a version of its search engine that complies with China's censorship rules. Google argues that it's better for it to have a presence in the country and to offer people some information, rather than for it not to be active in China at all... [S]hareholders and rights groups including Amnesty International... continue to push Google to improve its policies in countries known for human rights abuses and limits on freedom of speech... Sergey Brin, cofounder and president of technology for Google, abstained from voting on either of the proposals. 'I agreed with the spirit of these proposals,' Brin said. But he said he didn't fully support them as they were written, and so did not want to vote for them."

Better than in US

[thtrgremlin]

What Google has done is great, and I wish Google was allowed to interpret the censorship rules in the US the same way they do in China. What Google has UNIQUELY done (compared to every other search company as far as I know) is that they inform the user of when and why they are censored and the governmental department that has censored them. That is WAY better than what we have here where content is taken down and 'black bag' the content in such a way to make it appear that such information never existed, NOT that the government is trying to control your thoughts.

Hopefully Google will try to bring the same freedom to the US they have brought to China. Way to go shareholders for being informed voters and not paying attention to stupid articles like this one that trys to distort the facts for attention and ratings.

Amnesty International used to be more prudent about stuff like this. Shame on them.

Re:Do Human Rights pay the bills?

[maxume]

Google is somewhat a special case. Larry and Sergey have a controlling voting interest and thus have broad leeway to interpret what is in shareholder's interests:

http://finance.aol.com/company/google-inc/goog/nas [aol.com]

Re:Do Human Rights pay the bills?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

---
Brin said that revenue potential isn't what drove Google to enter the Chinese market. "Our primary goal in countries like China isn't to generate as much revenue as possible," he said. "We could abandon it tomorrow and not have a material effect on revenue. Our goal has been what's the most positive we can do."
---

Something tells me this isn't just about profit...

Re:The Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the average shareholder has basically no voting power at google? Google's series a stock has 10 times the voting strenght of the series b variety. Less than a dozen key employees of google hold enough series a that they can outvote all of the series b.

The choice of what google does lies entirely on it's board. Abstaining from voting and pointing the finger at shareholders is just trying to shift blame.

Re:The Problem

[ORBAT]

From what I can remember, all intelligence sources said that Saddam had no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The "OMG WMDS!" was simply White House spin to get support for the war.

Re:We all vote against human rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, the same argument about job loss was applied when machines were replacing people. The internet boom was made possible by the expansion of asian manufacturing of electronic equipment. The cost of computers came down enough so that average folks could purchase one, and in turn they began to demand more software and information services to meet their particular needs.