Corporate Business Ethics

Question: Discuss about the Corporate Business Ethics. Answer: The topic concerns balancing between the privacy and the profitability for Google. In recent scenario, the issue has raised an alarm regarding the point of violating the ethics of the business; because the users have been seemed not too happy with the fact that Google seeks much personal information while providing the service. On the other end, Google claims that keeping the track of other's information helps the company to fetch business. Hence, it has become a subject of skepticism whether google can draw adequate business without tracking people or not. According to, Craft (2013), with increasing practices of using social medias or other web platforms people have become more vulnerable to crimes and other unwanted incidents. Google asks for different private information such as contact details, mail id, location and so on. Google claims that all these data are used to deliver the good service, that in turn, helps them to draw more revenues. However, users are concerned that their personal information can be misused; on addition, if cyber hackers get access to such information it can result in severe accident (Hoffman, Frederick and Schwartz 2014). It has been seen that google uses photos shared by people for their map services. Reports have revealed that there is disappointment regarding such events as it happens without any consent of the people. For better understanding, the original scenario can be described in brief; Google of products like Google+, Gmail, YouTube, Google Map and other related services gather the information of their users. As per the Google's statement, they collect information to deliver the customized service for the users. Furthermore, Google also uses these data for the advertisement. The organization places cookies in the system of the users to track the web browsing history of that user (Kerr and Earle 2013). There is no such declaration till this date, from the organization on whether the collected information of web browsing history is deleted or not. Another inclusion in this list is the launching of Google Buzz, social networking platform of Google; because, the users found that their contact list was exposed to the public automatically unless one has opted it out. The majority of the users are disappointment with the privacy policy of the Google due to its enactment of revealing the information to any government agencies or law enforcement authorities. If such entities raise a request of revealing, the request does not require any reconsideration or approval from a judge or the court (Chen, Chiang and Storey 2012). It has been suspected that google tracks the data of internet users with the help of various tools; for instances, Google analytics, fonts and Google APIs. Use of such tools for tracking the IP address of the users makes Google able to determine the internet route of those users. Such information is valuable for Google because it is used for the marketing agencies and advertisements of Google itself; thus, Google places the privacy of the users at stake for its own interest. Reports have also revealed that Google collected almost 600 gigabytes of data from both the public and private Wi-Fi networks in around 30 countries without giving any prior notice to the Wi-Fi stations or the affected people. In this concern, incidents for Street View, one of the services offered by Google, can be said; this service has been accused by the users of taking pictures of their homes and looking too far into their private property. Moreover, people have also ra ised an objection to take their photographs and sharing them for the service without even informing them. Statement by Ferrell and Fraedrich (2015), in this context, is valid; they said that google has been bowing the ethics to its advertisement business. As mentioned by, Palazzo, Krings and Hoffrage (2012), an organization should not breach with the ethical provisions to make its business more profitable. As Google is the web giant and people use its services for daily activities it just cannot turn a deaf ear to the concerns of its user. Issues of bug attacking have happened with the Google services resulting in the leak of confidential information; hence, it means Google should review its security protection strategies very seriously so that it can avoid such mishaps further. Keep the fact of increasing dissatisfaction among service users in mind, the organization has shown interest to modify the privacy policy. Google stated that users can avoid sharing their personal information by turning off the option of share when they are accessing the service. On addition, Google clearly declared about it stand on the matter of maintaining the privacy of its users and answered all the questions of government in a 13-page letter. Google has also launched an extension called keep My Opt-Outs so that advertising companies cannot install the cookies in a users system. Thus, it can be said that Google has alternative options that can maintain the balance between the profitability and privacy. Therefore, overall extract of this discussion indicates that Google is required to be more ethical while dealing with the maintenance of the private information and there are lots of opportunities for the organization to grow further without hampering the ethical values of privacy protection. References Chen, H., Chiang, R.H. and Storey, V.C., 2012. Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact.MIS quarterly,36(4), pp.1165-1188. Craft, J.L., 2013. A review of the empirical ethical decision-making literature: 20042011.Journal of Business Ethics,117(2), pp.221-259. Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015.Business ethics: Ethical decision making cases. Nelson Education. Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014.Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality. John Wiley Sons. Kerr, I. and Earle, J., 2013. Prediction, preemption, presumption: How Big Data threatens big picture privacy.Stanford Law Review Online,66, p.65. Palazzo, G., Krings, F. and Hoffrage, U., 2012. Ethical blindness.Journal of Business Ethics,109(3), pp.323-338.