Why Bother?

Some of you may have noticed last week when Google decided to honor the 50th anniversary of the historic Sputnik 1 launch by modifying the logo on their home page. It’s certainly not unusual; the company has put up over 140 modified logos over the years to celebrate various obscure holidays, historical events, world happenings, and so on. As an amateur historian (and an amateur flight historian, at that) I quite enjoyed the recognition, just as I enjoyed the article in the Smithsonian’s “Air and Space” magazine last month, which finally revealed the names and career details about the scientists who made the first Soviet space launches happen.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment does not appear to have been shared by certain ultra-right wing groups, as reported by The Chicago Tribune this morning. It seems that they feel that celebrating the achievements of a “totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy” is wrong, and the fact that the company did not give equal times to patriotic holidays like Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day is intolerable. Please note, by the way, that these same groups that are calling on Google to censor its support for scientific pioneers are the same groups that have condemned the firm for working with the Chinese government to restrict content.

The key point that people on both sides of this issue appear to be missing is that Google is a private company, not a government agency or a non-profit guardian of the public knowledge. There may indeed be people in our country who believe that everything they see on Google came directly from God, but those same people are probably crafting their management policy based on the contents of their Snapple™ cap information blurbs. As a private company, Google has no obligation to submit to anyone’s ideas of what their site should look like; they also have the legal right to do business anywhere they like (except in cases where US or UN trade embargo or similar conditions exist). If the ultra-right wing groups do not like this, they are free to take their Internet searches (and indeed, any other business they might have considered doing with Google) elsewhere. Yahoo, Alta Vista, Ask, About, Netcrawler, and a dozen other Internet search engines will be more than happy to take up the slack.

One could make a similar point about the boycott of television stations and newspapers by conservative groups, and it fact I have, but in this case there is really no comparison; unlike a conventional media outlet, Google is not a content provider. People who do not wish to see television programming they find offensive can always avoid that channel, or (better still) turn off the set, but in the case of Internet searches, the exact same content is available to users who do not wish to see Google’s hippy, left-wing logo art over a host of alternative channels.

Which brings me to the point of this tirade. In our current, easily offended society, it generally isn’t possible to wake up in the morning without offending someone’s ideas of how the world should be. Every conceivable social, ethnic, religious, political and cultural group has its own ideas about what you should do, and will boycott, flame, sue, lobby, legislate, denounce or declare jihad against your company if you step across any of its particular lines, most of which they will not trouble to explain to you even if you do ask (you’re supposed to know them already).

Fortunately, there’s a management solution to this sort of drivel. My question to the senior management of Google would be, are you still making money despite the disapproval of the ultranationalist groups that consider you unpatriotic? If the answer is yes (and Google just set up a $90 million company foundation to work on social causes, so I’m willing to bet the answer IS yes), then why bother worrying about who you’ve offended today? Just get on with your business…