Revolutionary Moderation

Eugoogly?



(Summer semi-hiatus continues while I clean up code and links. Posting will be infrequent for a little while longer. And yes, by popular request, I will be posting the full results of the Gaffe contest. Eventually.)



So Google's about to be a public company, eh?



This Wired article from eighteen months ago describes both the underlying philosophy that makes us love Google so darn much, and why the short-term profit demands of public ownership may threaten that guiding philosophy. I'll go further than the article - watch Google following the IPO if you want to see a microcosm of the biggest problem with entrusting the world - the environment, the heatth system, our education system, name it - to capitalism, as the Fraser Institute types would have us do. In the short term, share purchasers will be buying because they trust the current leadership to know what they're doing. But it won't be long before huge shareholders like pension plans and mutual funds, who are under enormous pressure to show the highest possible results quarter to quarter, will begin to pressure Google to do the same, regardless of the long-term ruining of the Google environment.



The good news is that unlike the real environment, we can leave Google's planet and head to another any time we like. And there will always be another company producing a net environment we like.



But in the meantime, click through on a Google ad once in a while. You'll note I don't host them, and I certainly don't stand to profit by telling you this. But so long as Google continues to be rewarded for being the sort of environment we want to see on the internet, it will continue to be that environment.