Google’s Ethical Standards: An Overview

The Importance of Business Ethics and Behaviour

Write a report on google company on their ethical standard.

Business ethics and behaviour are the elements of business which brings significant benefits to the business and its employees. Ethical practices attract the employees and the investors as a result the company’s share price remains high. (Brenkert, 2012).

Google is a multinational company which deals with technology related services and products. The products comprises of cloud computing, online advertising technologies, software and hardware (Google, 2017). The main objective of the company is to sort the information in a way that it get accessible to everyone. The company focuses on developing its proprietary algorithms in order to maximize effectiveness. According to the Ethisphere institute, Google has been rewarded as the most ethical company. The winner’s list points out that, Google is the only company which is in the Computer Service category. The culture of the company, its working environment, substantial practices, and its code of conduct all gets adds to the ethical standards of the company (Hernandez, 2015).

The report contains details of the ethical standards and actions which are followed by Google. It also includes the code of conduct policies, ethical behaviour and tax payment policy. Along with this, a short survey is conducted to analyse what people think about the ethical standards of the company.

A survey on “How ethical do you think Google is?” was conducted. As seen from the given diagram only 1 out of 18 thinks that Google is completely unethical while 3 out of 18 thinks that Google is completely ethical.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I will rate Google at 8 because according to me it is not completely ethical but yes it is ethical.

“Don’t be evil” is the key motto of Google’s corporate code of conduct. It means providing unbiased access of information to users, emphasising on their needs and offering them the best products and services. It is also about doing the things in a correct and right way for example, following the law, treating the staff and co-workers with due respect and courtesy and acting morally. The motto can be put in practice by following the code of conduct policies of the company. Code of conduct is designed to measure the activities performed against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. The code written is to be followed by the all the people who are working with the company, either on temporary basis or permanent. Following is the Google’s code of conduct (Investor, 2017):

• It makes sure that it holds high standards in serving its users and treating them properly. Continuous communications and other interactions with the users help in increasing their trust.
• It provides different products and services to the users as per their references to make it more useful for them.
• The employees of the company are required to respect and protect the privacy of the user’s personal information. And measures should be taken to protect the data from unauthorized access.
• The company is very responsive. It responds to the users’ problems, feedback or questions promptly. It also instantaneously takes action as soon as they come to know that the users are not being well-served and their reputation is on stake.

• Google is dedicated towards providing supportive working environment to its employees in order to increase their potential.
• It provides equal employment opportunities based upon ones qualifications and professional skill. Acts like unlawful discrimination on the basis of colour, religion, veteran status and many more are strictly banned by the company.
• A policy against discrimination, harassment and retaliation has been framed so that proper action can be taken. Company also prohibits the excessive consumption of alcohol and use of drugs as they can affect employees’ health and safety.

• Some of the circumstances which create conflicts of interest are: Making personal investment in competitor companies, accepting employment or advisory positions from them and developing the business opportunities through the work done in the company. As per the policy, these should be avoided at highest priority.
• Developing outside inventions with the use of company’s resources and using company’s products, services or any other information in a way that improperly give personal benefits should also be dodged to avoid the conflicts

Apart from this, the code of conduct policy includes many other things related to safeguarding confidentiality and protecting Google’s assets.

Despite of complying with high ethical standards and having a good code of conduct, there are certain events that reported unethical behaviour of the organization. Following reports shows the unethical practices performed by the company:

In Kenya, Google was accused for being evil. The country’s largest business directory, Mocality has suspected that the company has been systematically accessing the database of Mocality in order to sell their competitive products to their business owners. It made thousands of dishonest phone calls to the businesses by acquiring the phone numbers through Mocality’s database. Later, the company requested money from these businesses by claiming about its partnership with Mocality. When Mocality’s founder find out about this, he conducted a sting operation and collected evidence against the company. This report does not matches with the company’s policy as the incident violates Google’s motto of “Don’t be evil” which says everything should be done according to law and in ethical manner (Investor, 2017).

Google’s Main Objective and Ethical Standards

Another incident which reports about unethical conduct  is that the company discriminates against its female employees. The US Department of Labour (DoL) has accused the company for violating federal employment laws with respect to the salaries paid to women employees. Systematic compensation disparities were found against women across the entire workforce. The department had the significant evidence of such discrimination and when asked about the data and records, Google strongly refused to hand over the data. As a result, the company violates its contractual agreements with federal government. This whole incident disrupted the  policies which were framed against discrimination and harassment (Spristritto, 2015).

Google was also targeted for invading the privacy of Wi-Fi users through its “street view” mapping cars. These cars roamed around the world for photographing street scenes and collected the samples of payload data sent over Wi-Fi network. This conduct violates the privacy of Wi-Fi users. The allegation was why the company scanned Wi-Fi networks and collects the data whilst its street view cars roamed city streets. Google said that it  happened mistakenly and unintentionally but this statement was dismissed by the critics as they had the relevant evidence against it. This report also does not match with the policies made by Google. The code of safeguarding the privacy of users has been desecrated here.

Google is now paying taxes in Australia with respect to the revenues made in Australia. In 2015, it was examined that there were almost 30 global corporations which paid no tax on the profits from their Australian operations. A law  “Google Tax” also named as Diverted Profits Tax came into existence in January 2016  which aims global companies who have annual incomes more than AU$1bn and stopped them from shifting Australian revenue overseas to reduce local tax accountability (Yoo, 2017).

According to the financial reports of the company, in 2016 the company made revenue of $1.141 billion while it was $498 million in 2015.Hence, the tax bill of Google Australia was $32.9 million in 2016. Out of this $882 million was advertising revenue, $220 million was research and development services and $39.6 million came from the hardware. But after the accounting arrangements the profit and loss statement came out to be of $16.6 million (Thomsen, 2017).

No, Google does not pay a fair share of tax in Australia as seen by the above mentioned financial reports. When Australian Taxation Office asked for the tax, Google said that it is now a reseller and service entity rather than only service entity. The companies are not paying tax but the Australian government is implementing new laws to get the tax from Google. For example, the recently passed Diverted Profits Tax (DPT) also known as Google Law and the anti-avoidance rule i.e. Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL).According to the recent news, the Australian government alleges that that they will get the fair share from Google as there are new ATO Tax Avoidance Taskforce which has issued a bill of $2.9 billion to most of the multinational companies which also includes Google (Khadem, 2017).

It has been concluded that Google is an ethical company. Google follows a motto which says “Don’t be evil” and it can easily be said that it is implemented. The organisation serves the users, ignores any type of conflict and supports everyone. It has been already rewarded as the most ethical company by Ethisphere institute but still it is trying to better its ethical behaviour. The final ethical rating of Google is 9 as the company is on the edge to attain a position of completely ethical.

References

Altstadt, A 2011, Google Ethics and Social Responsibility, viewed on 7 January 2018, < https://prezi.com/ksqjhh8x0x4s/google-ethics-and-social-responsibility/>.

Brenkert, G 2012, The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, Oxford University Press Inc, USA.

Creighton, A 2017, Technology giants pay 1 per cent tax, viewed on 8 January 2018, < https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/treasury/technology-giants-paying-just-1-per-cent-tax/news-story/7c0b49efea4c44e90978aab6d216a30e>.

Google 2017, About Us, viewed on 7 January 2018, < https://www.google.co.in/about/>.

Hernandez, P 2015, Microsoft and Google Rank Among the World’s Most Ethical Companies, viewed on 7 January 2018, < https://www.eweek.com/it-management/microsoft-and-google-rank-among-the-world-s-most-ethical-companies>.

Investor 2017, Google Code of Conduct, viewed on 7 January 2018, < https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html>.

Khadem, N 2017, Multinational still don’t pay ‘fair share’ in tax, despite $8.1m taxpayer-funded ads, viewed on 8 January 2018, < https://www.smh.com.au/money/multinationals-still-dont-pay-fair-share-in-tax-despite-81m-taxpayerfunded-ads-20170919-gyk9ic.html>.

Spristritto 2015, An Analysis of the Ethical, Social and Environmental Standards and Practices of Google, viewed on 7 Januray 2018, < https://sebastianpistritto.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/an-analysis-of-the-ethical-social-and-environmental-standards-and-practices-of-google/>.

Thomsen, Simon 2017, Australia’s Google Tax Has Been Approved, viewed on 8 January 2018, < https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/03/australias-google-tax-has-been-approved/>.

Yoo, T 2017, Google Australia’s tax bill doubled last year—and the ATO is still chasing them, viewed on 8 January 2018, < https://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-australias-tax-bill-doubled-last-year-but-the-ato-is-still-chasing-2017-4>.