When Chris Anderson challenges Sergey Brin on the Google’s ‘Don’t be Evil’ mantra, the founder of the search engine speaks about the importance of long-term thinking, whistle-blowing and acting as a community of ethical business people:

I do think that often companies end up being short-sighted with respect to their decisions, and perhaps they’re motivated by the next particular earnings and whatnot. In particular, actually, as we’ve gone though this investigation, it turns out that a number of companies were aware of certain attacks on their systems, and yet they didn’t come forward, and as a result other companies couldn’t be better prepared.

Now, I should give a lot of credit. Some companies have, and I would point you for example to Northrop Grumman, that had a significant intrusion where the details of the … terabytes of data about the F-35 fighter were stolen. That’s recently … That’s public, and that’s in congressional reports and was actually very useful to our investigation. If more companies were to come forward with respect to these sorts of security incidents and issues, I think we would all be safer.

In our last post on the China/Google subject, we highlighted how these challenging situations (understatement recognised) can define the company for decades to come. Brin puts some convincing arguments forward and makes it easy to believe that the interests of the Chinese people are being considered in his deliberations on this crisis.

When you have a code of conduct like Don’t be Evil for such a large company, it creates a big spotlight and has the potential for creating binary views on company actions. With such little ambiguity in the credo and people’s tendency for oversimplification of actions into good and evil, Google sets itself up for a great deal of public scrutiny.

Brin offers that the situation is complex and there are “many potential answers” for this difficult question. So far, so good. The ball is now in the court of the Chinese government and the line has been drawn in the sand.

+ Watch the interview on TED
+ Interesting: www.dontbeevil.com
+ Previous post on Google/China

Google and the Chinese government are at loggerheads…again. The crisis has been precipitated by the Chinese government hacking into the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

Google’s democratic brand values are strongly aligned to human rights, supported by its ‘don’t be evil’ code of conduct.

Google has a dilemma with China in delivering its mission to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” as China requires censorship which is at odds with this mission. So Google has compromised with a view to influencing a change in the Chinese government’s attitude.

The way Google is responding to the Chinese governmental action is congruent with their brand values. They are living the Google brand – and so this action builds the perception of Google as an authentic company. This kind of conflict is a real test for any brand and maybe is best reflected in some comments by Ralph Larsen, former chief of J&J:

The core values embodied in our credo might be a competitive advantage, but that is not why we have them. We have them because they define for us what we stand for, and we hold them even if they became a competitive disadvantage.

If anything, this response shows that Google is true to their principles and is willing to risk massive market share to stay in line with their principles.  John Kennedy, a Silcon Valley reporter states that Google is No. 2 in the market and making gains on the incumbent:

Google has made impressive gains in China since July last, when it was at 30pc compared to Baidu’s 68pc,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Our analysis suggests that given Google’s recent strong performance, market share is certainly not the reason behind its threat to leave China at this time.

Google’s response to the Chinese government’s control over human rights campaigners isn’t actually activist in itself but true to the Google brand. The impact has yet to be seen, but this could well turn out to be an example of where a company has more sociopolitical influence than government, especially as Google ranks widely as the world’s most influential brand.

Their response is considered and leaves the door open for the Chinese government whilst flagging that they’re not going to allow their own values to be subverted.

The paper that outlines our civil branding effort and explains a technique for creating more civil brands is now ready for download. Inside, you will find the following:

[1] Synopsis of the civil branding idea and its importance to marketers and society.
[2] Step-by-step process for creating more differentiated, more civil brands.
[3] Case studies from Citibank, Dove, Benetton, HSBC and others.

+ Download here