Google.org, a For-Profit Charity 355
Google has set up a subsidiary, Google.org, a for-profit philanthropy with initial capital of a billion dollars. Not being organized on a tax-free basis carries both advantages and drawbacks. From the article: "Unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit, allowing it to fund start-up companies, form partnerships with venture capitalists and even lobby Congress. It will also pay taxes." One of Google.org's first projects is the development of a plug-in hybrid vehicle that achieves a mileage rating equivalent to 100 MPG.
Non-registration link (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.com.com/Googles+unusual+approach+to+ph ilanthropy/2100-1014_3-6115533.html [com.com]
My car will get negative 100Mpg (Score:5, Funny)
Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?
This sort of reminds me of a prank a friend pulled in college. One guy was always entering the room to announce he had managed to drive is economy car so skillfully that got outrageous gas milage. Tiring of this, my friend started adding a gallon of gas to the braggarts tank every night so that his milage and brags got bigger and bigger. Then the next week he started siphoning out a gallon out of the tank. The brags "mysteriously" ceased without explanation.
So my car is going to use photovoltaics, and have an onboard device that inhales smog, and uses the electricity to produce gasoline. Then I'm going to drive up to gas stations, connect the hose and pump gas back into the filling station tanks. That will mess with their arithmetic! and I'll have my negative 100MPG vehicle.
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Yes, it does, considering there is no gas involved.
I don't understand what you think is "goofy" about this. I put 10 gallons of gas into my Prius, I get 500 miles out of those 10 gallons. Hence, 50MPG. The fact that there is an electrical aspect is irrelevant.
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Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg (Score:5, Interesting)
eg: You use $1.20 of electricity to charge your electric-only car up. Gas costs $2.40/gal. You have bought the equivalent of 1/2 gal of gas. You drive 100 miles before recharging, thus you've reached the equivalent of 200MPG.
Simpler way to measure it! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Eivind.
Re:Simpler way to measure it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simpler way to measure it! (Score:5, Insightful)
And even with our absurdly high tax rates on fuel, some political parties are still talking about adding mega-taxes on "highly polluting vehicles" (as in, extra thousands of pounds per year for having one).
The thing is, I used to drive a little 1.2-litre Vauxhall Corsa (1995 model) to work. Now I drive a 2-litre turbo Subaru Impreza WRX (2003 model). The former was significantly more fuel efficient (though as an interesting anecdote, far less fuel efficient than the newer model) and would be in one of the lowest bands for these new "environmental taxes". The latter is deemed a monster, and would be in the highest or second-highest band. And yet in reality, the WRX's emissions aren't much higher than a typical family saloon.
What's really telling is that when I drove the Corsa, I commuted around a 70 mile round-trip per day to get to work. Now I work in the city where I live, and do maybe 1/10 of that. I generate vastly less pollution now than I used to, and most of what I do generate is sitting in artificially generated traffic queues designed by our local bus-mad council to make car driving unappealing and promote bus use. And yet, these proposed "environmental taxes" would penalise me far more today.
If you insist on using the tax system to make some behaviours unpopular (I question the ethicality of this approach in any context, but that's a different matter) and you want to make pollution from cars unpopular, then taxing fuel rather than the type of vehicle makes far more sense.
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Odd. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Odd. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't find it odd at all. I'm involved with several FLOSS projects and one of them recently researched starting its own foundation (non-profit) or corporation (for profit). Everyone I talked to (including people associated with the Mozilla Foundation and the Python and Apache Software Foundations) recommended starting a for profit corporation. The restrictions placed on federally tax exempt (501(c)(3)) organizations was too great in their opinion. With a for profit corporation, you have much fewer restrictions.
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A one word rebuttal: ICANN.
Re:Odd. (Score:5, Insightful)
In Africa, a large amount of US aid was used to build a milk plant. But it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control. Many aid loans were blown by corrupt leaders, who then left it to the citizens to pay back.
In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them. But not if government officials demand bribes, permits, taxes, and high fees at every step of the process, and not if they demand high fees on everything imported and exported, and not if the judiciary is so corrupt or slow that they have no recource if land or other items are taken from them. If you had 100 million dollars, would you put it in Venesuela or North Korea right now? People who have paid a bitter price. That's a lot of money, and then they wonder why they have employment problems.
In China, millions of people died from hunger until the farmers were able to have property rights, then the problem disapeared and the economy started to boom. Really, who would slave away on a farm where they own none of the take and none of the land. Once again, the people in China didn't need charity nor help from the government, what they needed was property rights. Charity would have prolonged the problem and made it worse. What they needed was the power to help themselves, once they got it then the poverty problems took care of themselves naturally.
Re:Odd. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever heard of the Bhopal disaster [wikipedia.org]? It was one of the most deadly industrial accidents ever, and it was due to the negligence of Union Carbide employees (a US corporation). How about the Exxon Valdez [wikipedia.org]? Yet another vast catastrophe caused by irresponsible employees of a US corporation. Or hey, a little closer to geek-home - how about when MasterCard allowed 40 million credit card numbers [msn.com] to be stolen (the largest such leak ever reported) due to poor software design?
The funny thing about these incidents of corporate irresponsibility is that not only did these companies have totally stupid policies that were very likely to result in danger, once disaster struck they were totally unaccountable for the damage they caused.
It would be moronic to claim that the government knows best, or that massive bureaucracy is an effective way to make decisions, but this song and dance about how profit-driven instutitions magically become the most efficient and responsible is absurd.
In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them.
Yes, those factories are often sweatshops. Those roads often damage delicate environment which is needed for eco-tourism, scientific research, or agriculture. Those mines can be unregulated death-traps for miners in addition to causing toxic runoff pollution of local water supplies. None of these problems concern the investor, just the local population. In short, the "infrastructure" eagerly pushed by foriegn investors really isn't infrastructure for the improvement of the country or it's people so much as infrastructure for the improvement of the investor's bottom line. Sure, some officials are just corrupt fucks, but has it ever occured to you that there might be good reasons to try to restrict, regulate, and/or tax foreign companies trying to exploit your sovereign nation?
I agree with the sentiment that people need to be given the freedom to take care of themselves, but I don't think that empowering and depending on exploitive investors and multinational conglomerates is the way to give people that freedom.
MOD ABUSE? (Score:3, Insightful)
Overstatement (Score:3, Insightful)
With all due respect,I believe that you're overstating or over simplifying your case.
The Bhopal disaster was a combination of UCC, Indian government failures and cultural issues. High population density because UCC provided JOBS that paid well, challenges due to differences between American and Indian culture, no infrastructure
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No mention of government ownership, and a clear statement that UCC owned over half the stock. The site makes no mention of government mismanagement, instead claiming intentional sabotage. If U
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(Of course, they do use child labor for their advertising, so take it for what it's worth...)
Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision (Score:5, Interesting)
I think one or both of the founders drive a Prius as well, so this would be inline with their vision of what can be done to make the world a better place.
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Your statement implies that they only get the discount (really a employer subsidy) if the vehicle is a hybrid. If that's the case, it seems awfully short-sighted. Why not a conventional gasoline or diesel vehicle that also achieves at least 45mpg too? Is their goal to promote hybrids or to promote efficiency? Seems
Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, that's not in the US, and you still need particle filters, but still, I also think that limiting the options is a bad idea.
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Re:Homework not done and it shows. (Score:5, Informative)
For long battery life, they do a lot of battery management to make the battery last the life of the car.
For starters they do not treat the battery the same way you would treat a cell phone or laptop battery. Full charge then deep discharge cycles are not done. The battery is rarely charged to 100% and almost never discharged below 50%.
There are Prius cars out there with over 250K miles and still going strong on the original battery. Do some online research on the rate of Prius battery failures. Most battery failures are not the HV traction pack but the 12V cabin battery.
Cell phones and laptops are often charged fully and run down below 50% for long battery run-time. This kills batteries. Cell phone and laptop batteries life is not expected to last more than a couple years. The Prius battery on the other hand is expected to last the life of the car. The plug in mod may change the expected battery life considerably.
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That's because your cordless phones probably used Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, which benefit from deep discharge/recharge cycles (aka 'conditioning'.)
Now, regarding NiMH batteries...
What about 50mpg conventional vehicles? (Score:2)
interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I submitted this story (same exact NY time article even) 3 days ago, when it was news.
Anyhow, the term "non-profit" evokes a warm fuzzy feeling that it shouldn't. John D Rockefeller did more to save the whales (via kerosene) than GreenPeace ever will.
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Google creates $1bn charity fund Wednesday October 12, @01:58PM Rejected
But hey, that's Slashdot for you.
Hybrid Vehicles? (Score:5, Funny)
Meanwhile, somewhere in Redmond, Steve Ballmer will be plotting to 'fucking kill' them both. Unfortunately by this stage he'll have put his back out throwing chairs, so he'll instead switch to 'fucking kill'ing them with a motorised chair with wheels, which Microsoft will market it as the Zume.
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Re:Hybrid Vehicles? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hybrid Vehicles? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh, yeah? Well, try running Plan 9 OS on an Apple
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Innovating (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Innovating (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.
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Re:Innovating (Score:5, Insightful)
Valuable Google Assets: Alerts, Blogger, Desktop, Directory (DMOZ), Images, Maps, News, Toolbar, Web Search, Gmail, Mobile, SMS
Could be Valuable: Book Search, Catalogs, Checkout, Finance, Froogle, Local, Scholar, Video, Calendar, Groups, Talk, Translate
Silly, fun, useless to them: Earth, Picasa, SketchUp,
In the labs: Google Trends, Music Trends, Visually Impaired Search, Notebook, Mars, Page Creator, Public Transportation Maps, RSS Reader, Web Accelerator, Taxi Finder, Suggest, Froogle Mobile, Sets.
With the possible exception of Mars, that seems pretty interconnected. Some of the silliest ideas, like Google Maps, gMail, the Google Toolbar, etc have become standard usage now. Even the silly ones, like Google Earth, were part of their push to create 3D maps of all major US cities, which would have been a valuable resource if they could have pulled it off.
They're like the Bell Labs of the 'net. Lot of pure research, some of which is or might be stupidly profitable. But we'll all reap rewards in the end.
Like Omidyar Network? (Score:5, Informative)
Beyond "don't be evil" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad to see that Google is going beyond their "Don't be evil" motto to "Be good". I applaud their apparent sense of social responsibility.
I believe that much good can be achieved by large corporations who are willing to contribute to making the world a better place - whether it be through science for science's sake (e.g. Bell labs), welfare, world aid or whatever. I will be interested to see how this translates into a "for-profit" environment... presumably their profit margin expectations will not be as high as they might otherwise be?
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Their profit margin expectations may well be nil. It's merely that they are *allowed* to make a profit, not that they necessarily *will*.
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Uh, guys? You really don't have a fucking clue about this non-profit stuff do you? Thass ok most people don't.
Non-profits can make huge amount of profit. They just can't pay it out as dividends. So they pay it out in legal ways.
Non-profits are one of the biggests scams ans boondoggles of the 20th century.
Most non-profits SHOULD be for-profits for a number of reasons beyo
Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive much (Score:2, Interesting)
After seeing the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car' I was so angry I swore I would never buy another car that doesn't run on electricity. Hopefully Google is going to save my ass so I don't have build it.
I Love Google.
Hindu guru (Score:4, Funny)
Anybody who can study with a guru sitting on them has my respect
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Anybody who can study with a guru sitting on them has my respect
Are you kidding? Those guys never eat.
Try it with a fried-chicken-eating Southern Baptist Minister; then you'll get my attention.
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equivelent MPG (Score:2)
Re:equivelent MPG (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/
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A kilowatt-hour should have a standard number of joules in it as should a gallon of standard gasoline.
That would compare your engergy per mile.
Then figure out a cost per joule for each and you have a cost comparison.
As long as you state what you're measuring and you're comparing equivalent units, it shouldn't matter much.
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1 kWh = 1000 Wh = 1000 W * 3600s = 3,600,000 J = 3.6 MJ
However for this kind of things it's useful to consider the inefficencies in distribution (e.g. does it 'cost' more to get a gallon of gasoline or the equivalent amount of electricity?)
Re:equivelent MPG (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, I've seen two main methods of computing the fuel economy of a hybrid. The silliest one is the EPA method, which simply measures emissions and plugs them into a government mandated formula. This works for most traditional cars, but for hybrids it tends to overstate the fuel economy. The other accounts for the amount of gasoline and electricity from the grid used to power the vehicle. If you never plug your vehicle into an outlet, this is equivalent to dividing travel distance by number of gallons of gasoline. If you do plug your car in at night, it gets harder to calculate, since we don't typically burn gasoline to create electricity on the grid.
About the best you can do is compare emissions equivalence. Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid. To find a useful ratio, you have to make assumptions about the particular mix of energy sources providing electricity to your home: Coal, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc. For specific regions that's doable, but for a nationwide scale you have to work with averages.
Given how cheap electricity is compared to many things, I suppose most people will just look at what they're paying at the pump, though.
--JoeDoubt it (Score:2)
Given how cheap electricity is compared to many things, I suppose most people will just look at what they're paying at the pump, though.
We're talking about a lot of electricity.
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MPG? (Score:3, Funny)
Before the Google love-in gets out of hand (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're promoting cleaner vehicles or saving kittens it's all fine and dandy. But what about accountability? What if Google, with its billions, starts doing things that some of us strongly disagree with? Would Christian conservatives be happy if Google started a campaign to push condoms in schools and third world countries to help stop AIDS? Would progressives be happy if Google started a campaign to restore family values through aggressively marketing church youth groups?
Let's remember that this is the same Google which is arguably supporting the tyrannical Chinese government's censorship. Fundamentally, we should be asking, what is Google's agenda? What if we disagree with it?
I expect many people will be inclined to give me responses about it being an example of a company doing what it wants in a free market, and that it is still bound by the law. However, I say, TANSTAAFL, and I prefer my social engineering to be done by the government because in principle at least the government represents me and my interests, whatever my financial involvement.* Are we looking at a future where democracy is contingent on share ownership?
* yeah yeah, spare me
Google seems a bit like Apple around here at times, perhaps a little too far above reasonable criticism. A great many people seem to ignore the fact that it is a self-interested entity in a competitive market, and at the end of the day what it values is what's good for Google and not the good of all mankind. Even if you think this is great, I urge you to think about whether it's really a positive thing to have one company exerting so much influence over the information we receive (google.com), knowing so much about what we are interested in (google.com), what we talk about (gmail), where we go (google maps/earth), what we buy (Adwords, froogle), what we are creating (the emerging word processing software and related tools, Picasa), and apparently now, how we operate as a society.
Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?
Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand (Score:5, Insightful)
The government should do a few main things:
-make sure other people don't take my stuff, my life, or impose upon my life in a negative way.
-protect my life and the sovereignty of my country.
-make sure its populace is well-educated and healthy
-deal with the people who cross the above two in a just manner.
In doing the above in a farsighted manner, it will maintain a good quality of life through protecting our nature reserves (if we don't have nature reserves, then arguably a future generation may indeed have a lower quality of life, lack of knowledge, and a higher death rate. Education and health may well be an extrapolation of 'protect my life.'
Of course, to do all of that a huge network of laws is written, several branches of government are created, and everything gets bogged down in beaurocracy - especially if morals are the key focus of politicians.
Google's involvement with the chinese government is actually a far cry better than any other search engine - when pages are censored, it tells the user that there were results that were censored. In a devious way, it does more to increase the knowledge of government censorship in China better than showing everything.
Google is doing things with google.org that a government shouldn't have to do. And you've seen what kind of bumbling the beaurocracy does when this kind of thing is involved.
Because google's company is knowledge based, it is not beholden to the same types of shareholders as, say, an oil company. This is well shown by their work on a hybrid-electric car. And because it has shareholders, instead of throwing money at problems like poor food and water quality in developing countries, it will work to fix the causitive issues. And with the brilliant minds they have there, I have no doubt this will be extremely successful.
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>have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should
>be doing.
Finally, my dream of seeing a dragon run for president may be coming true! Dunkelzahn for President in 2056!
Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mr. Catbutt, somebody from The Road to Hell Paving Corporation is on the line, and would like a word with you.
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Far less damage than if Coca-Cola's board, GM's board, Virgin's board, and the boards several other companies that have established charitable arms turned rabid. For every
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I'm sorry, but the government just isn't doing that good of a job. Now I will spare you my libertarian rants, but basically, we have Bush giving alot of money to Christian groups that are against condoms for them to fight against AIDs, so if google or Microsoft starts giving comdoms to poor villages, we can see if the Microsoft village or the
Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you have it completely backwards. This is exactly what private groups should do and the government should not.
But I believe we have a first principal mismatch. You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual. I on the other hand don't want to the government doing anything and I trust the individual.
It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need. Sadly, it never crossed his mind to give to private cherity. He, like you, worships government.
See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment. Maybe you don't like the military, abortion, or perhaps welfare. The government doesn't give you a choice.
Why don't people know what true liberty is?
"Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?"
Ask that about government. Government has a military and secret police forces.
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Are you assuming this, or did you actually ask him?
Personally I think your friend has the right idea. Yes, he as one individual could choose to use the money to give to good causes. But what about those who choose not to do so? Superficially, we can
One billion dollars for FOSS (Score:3, Insightful)
O. Wyss
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Not much. A billion dollars SOUNDS like a lot, but it really isn't. 1 billion dollars would get you 100 million dollars to work with a year if invested well. 100 million dollars a year is enough to pay maybe 1,000 people a year. That may be enough for a handful of large-scale projects, but it's not world-changing.
Re:One billion dollars for FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
25 clones of Tetris
24 C standard libraries
23 stupid desktop widgets
22 pointless window managers
21 HTTP servers
20 Wiki web applications
19 useless shells
18 password crackers
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.
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That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.
Summer of Code (Score:2)
Just imagine a billion would mean 1000 Summer of Codes in one year or 200 in five years. There's no need to limit it to studends but anybody participating in FOSS.
Besides the current SoC has a rather low impact since it doesn't follow any vision but only strenghten already established projects.
O. Wyss
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25 clones of Tetris
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.
Sure if you just pour this billion onto everybody's head. But if the FOSS projects are carefully chosen and a clear vision is followed such crap could be easily avoided. Besides a billion is so much money it wouldn't mat
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Re:One billion dollars for FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Oops. Bad plan. We got a time disparity: He had lots of time for FreeBSD, and the volunteers didn't have time to catch up...
We seem to have learned a bunch about how to spend money since - there's been pushed some amounts of money through the project (many scales down from a billion dollars, though) and it doesn't seem to mess thing up. However, we spent years learning how to do that, and there's still clear limits on how much money we would be able to spend positively. I suspect Google understands this. Through their Summer of Code projects they seem to be pushing about the right amount of money that open source can gracefully accept. Pushing another billion dollar into the open source economy in a sudden fashion would in my opinion most likely destroy large parts of the Open Source world.
Eivind.
Google! Fuck Yeah! (Score:3, Funny)
some musings (Score:2)
Plug in hybrid? (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't innovation, it's PR. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
Well, this IS Slashdot. News for Nerds. Things that batter.
Same way they profit from everything else: (Score:4, Funny)
Don't be evil (Score:2)
Exactly.... In the boardroom:
.. well... We could take our "Don't be evil philosophy and apply it to making money in performing valuable charity work for the poor, destitute and dehumanized populations of the world!"
.. hmm... Wow! Your right! "Don't be evil" will TOTALLY go over well with the poor! We'll make a fortune! Haha! I have a bigger bed on our Google Jet th
What should we do to make more profit?
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Re:Wow, the evil begins (Score:5, Insightful)
They've slit their own throats on this one."
Yeah, the people behind Google, the most successful web venture in the world, didn't give any thought at all as to the consequences of making it a for profit charity.
Have you perhaps thought that they are targetting other methods of funding that don't rely as much on the tax deduction angle? How about that they are planning on making products that can make money and therefore self fund the charity?
I highly applaud them, and I think the lack of needing to be non profit could be very liberating and free them up to do many things they otherwise may have not been able to.
Very excited to watch this one!
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So if Google, with its huge wealth, can kick start the availability of cars that are cheaper to run and far better for the environment, how can there not be a market?
I really hope they succeed... and then bring the success down under, as we nee
Don't need ethics, just money (Score:2)
I think you miss the point of
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And the largest disadvantage to a "for-profit charity?" Your donations are NOT tax deductible.
You and I aren't going to be donating money, google.com is ($1 billion in seed money). Since google.org is a child company of google.com, their accountants and lawyers can futz with it to minimize any tax implications.
Re:Well it has to suceed (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just waiting for Capt. Obvious to join the conversation.
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Google already has significant backlash, this is thinly veiled move to stem the inevitable tide of public opinion against them as they continue to grow and control the world's informati
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if google.org was to, for example own n important patent on new automotive technology they could use the money to expand while doing other charity work rather than tiptoeing around a maze of federal regulations
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just because someone say the word charity does not make it so. This is a for profit. period.
No, it is a tax classification (Score:3, Insightful)
By declaring themselves a for-profit charity the regulatory burden is dramatically reduced. So, whe
"DOUBLESPEAK!!1111!!!" for no red tape (Score:3, Insightful)
You answer your own objections. If you declare yourself a non-prof you run into (by your own words) "oversight, restrictions, tax headaches, reporting, etc." That is clearly what they are trying to avoid. Non-profit is a tax classification. They don't want to be under that c
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Parent not a flamebait (Score:2)
Mercedes and Swatch would have been pretty "smart" to call that a 'charity' cause, but I would call it 'profitable business'. There are a lot of causes to find that can not be mistaken for profitable business, what about helping the p