Google Stakeholders And Corporate Social Responsibility

Whether Google has implemented a Strategy to serve all the Stakeholders

Discuss about the Google Stakeholders and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Today, billions of people are using internet to access and search the information and the content they are interested online. The search engines play a critical role in accessing and finding the relevant information. The development of the search engines are strongly correlated with the development of the internet as without the location tools, it would be impossible to locate or search information on the internet. With the internet, the people have the option to search for every kind of data or information available on the internet. This information may relate to their work, school or other official purposes or it could be of non-serious type. Sometimes, the users search for such information which they would not like to disclose to their near and dear ones. This information may be related to the religious views, political views, medical conditions or the sexual orientation. The mass public use search engines to share their thoughts or search for information not because they are assured about the information and its legitimacy; but because of the assumed secrecy provided by the search engines. The people assume that the information searched on the search engines remain between them and the machine. Moreover, these internet search engines do not demand any registration or authentication; therefore, the people assume that nobody would be able to connect their search queries with them (Bodogh, 2011).

However, the search engines are central to all the internet related activities. The internet users use the search engines to access different websites, to read news or to connect through social media. Google is considered as the leader of the search engines. It is the most dominant search engine and has unparalleled speed and search results. Google is accurate for its precision and relevance of the information that the customers seek. Although, Google is simple looking and easy to use; it masks a highly complicated search algorithm. The company is famous for providing excellent services at zero cost. However, there are several issues related to the user privacy and misuse of its power. Today, the success of a business is dependent on its internet presence and rank in the search engine results. Since Google is the most commonly used search engine, it can misuse its power to show misguiding information and giving priority to some other business. Moreover, another fundamental issue in the company’s operations is the violation of the user’s privacy. The company serves as a central database to all its users. It stores the personal information of the users related to their search queries, email accounts, photos, videos and other digital aspects of their lives. The storage of the vast amount of the user’s personal information can result in serious risk to the privacy of the public. The internet users unknowingly give access to the users related to the interests, needs, preferences and intents. However, these users do not realize that the search engines use this information to maintain and create a database which can be used at a later time (Tene, 2008).

Employees

Google is a multinational business organization that deals with the internet related products. Therefore, there are numerous stakeholders of the company all across the globe. It has implemented the diversification strategy and sell several products such as Google Glass, Google Fiber, search engine, Google + and gmail. Since the company deals with diversified products, the stakeholders of the company also come from different groups. The stakeholders of any company refer to the people who can be affected by the organization’s policies or it refers to the people who can influence the strategies or the organization’s policies. The stakeholders of a company may include creditors, government, directors, shareholders, management, trade unions and the community wherein the company operates. The stakeholders of the company influence its policies in direct or indirect manner. As Google is a leading technological organization, the company has responsibility to serve the interest of its stakeholders. The company tries to address its social responsibility through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. With respect to Google, the major stakeholders of the company can be categorized as users, employees, advertisers, investors, governments and communities. The stakeholders of the company are important for the organization as the popularity of the company is dependent on the stakeholders. It also defines the business value of the organization (Girard, 2009).

Employees: The employees are the major stakeholders of a business organization. Google takes care of the interest of the employees by providing proper compensation and rewards according to their efforts. The company is popular as the best employment firm due to the compensation and the rewards provided to the employees. Since Google largely relies on its human resources for innovation and competitiveness, it tries to engage the employees by providing them competitive compensation and fun workplace. The company provides various benefits including gyms, game space and sharing ideas with one another. The company provides employment occupational health and safety measures for all its employees (Meyer, 2016).

Major Customers: The Company has categorized its customers of as a major stakeholders group. Google collects its revenue by charging the advertisers who implement online campaigns on the webpage. The online advertisers are the major source of the company’s revenues. Google tries to satisfy the demand of its customers by providing them effective services. The company has implemented different strategies to increase the effectiveness of their advertising campaign. For instance, the company has created segregated the customers according to their search queries and promotes the products accordingly. Google also promote the products according to their previous feedbacks and performance. The company is concerned about the advertisers as they are the major source of the company’s revenue (Harrison & Wicks, 2013).

Major Customers

Investors: The Company assures that it serves the interest of all its stakeholders including the investors. The company went public in 2004 and since then the number of investors to the company has increased. The investors are the important asset to the company as they assure that the company is growing its profits. Moreover, the investors also assure that the company has access to the financial assets when needed. The company focuses on creating useful and environment-friendly products as they uplift the position of the organization and the use of energy efficient methods reduces the company’s expenses in the long run (Harrison & Wicks, 2013).

Government: The government is the major stakeholder of the company as its rules and regulations impact on the business of the company. In the light of various referendums and laws on the user privacy, it is important for the organization to comply with its demands. The company has to deal with several governments as it is a multinational company. The government regulates the company on several laws such as user privacy. The government is a significant stakeholder of the company as they can forbid the operations of the company in that particular jurisdiction. The company has implemented several policies to assure that it comply with the laws and regulations of that specific place. It has several strict laws regarding the users’ privacy. Although the company tracks the private information and search queries of a user to provide more customized and relevant results to the users, Google assure that no misuse occurs from the private information of the users. They have implemented a system wherein the user specific information becomes anonymous after a certain period of time. The company also ensures to abide by the privacy laws and regulations of the particular country wherein it is operating.

Communities:  The Google community refers to the society and the people where the company is operating. It is the responsibility of the company to give back to the society wherein it is operating. The communities get indirect or direct benefits from the company. The companies can engage in charity programs, CSR activities and philanthropic activities to contribute back to the society. Google’org is the charitable arm of the company. It promotes the organizations and innovations through grants, investment and seed fund to the companies which are focused on addressing the global challenges and issues. The company is also dedicates to provide its collected information to the Nonprofit organizations. For instance, it provides discount to the nonprofit organizations and provide search queries to predict disease outbreaks. The predictions are based on tracking the information from the location of the search interests. Other than that, it also encourages its employees to engage in philanthropic activities. The company contributes a significant amount of its profits to various charitable organizations. It also encourages the employees to take part in philanthropic activities in its annual charity event (Hafner, 2006).

Investors

Therefore, it can be deduced that the company has extended the ethical practices in the internet environment. Google has contributed a lot to safeguard the interest of its customers, shareholders and community. However, there are still several privacy concerns of the users.

Google started out as a small search engine and ranking system; however, now emerged as the most successful internet business organization. The company has reached these heights by providing competitive products, recruiting best talent and ethical business practices. The philanthropic activities of the company have assisted it in establishing a name for itself and creating a brand image. Therefore, respecting for the user’s privacy is a heightened concern for the company. Google has covered majority of market share in its advertisement, social networking and providing operating software services over the time. Government and other regulator have prepared various laws and statues regarding data protection of the public. Google despite of its various services has been closely handling all the legal and ethical issues in protecting client’s data in a determined approach.  Privacy concerns of the people who are taking services from the web browsers of Google are gaining momentum with time. This company has been providing several services ranging from email services, Google lass to search engine. However, the main issue in most of the users’ mind is internet privacy (Fischer-Hübner,Lambrinoudakis, & Pernul, 2009).

The issue of the privacy has also restrained several users from using the company’s services. It has been observed that Google in order to improve its search engine’s capabilities keeps all the data of users who have used its browser without users’ permission. It results in several questions in the minds of users such as if Google is violating user’s privacy (Levene, 2011).

In this debate, the argument of the company is that it is using the customers’ information to customize the search results and provide better results to their search queries. However, there are significant security concerns with maintaining the database of the user’s activities as this information can be used by malicious contents. The services provided by the Google are also free because it generates revenue by sharing the consumer interest with the advertisers. If Google would not use this information, it will not be able to provide free services. Therefore, the customers have to choose between free services or customer privacy (Beckstrom, 2015).

However, despite the increasing cyber-attack Google has developed a web shield which results into protection of clients’ information from being hacked. Therefore, it is found that Google in spite of its cloud based risky services or consistently increasing cyber-attack has established itself as preparing effective non-breakable cloud transparent program in its value chain activities.

Government

Moreover, the company can also implement security audits to check if its program or products are conducting security breach to the user privacy. Implementing an external privacy audit will increase the credibility of the audit and give an unbiased review to the users (Martin & Serjantov, 2005).

The one of the most prominent strategy which is being followed by Google is to increase its core competency and user privacy in all of its services in internet market segment is deleting the user records after a specific time period. Google claims to have uniquely store the users’ information program wherein after completion of 18 months all the data becomes anonymized and becomes untraceable for the general public. Needless to say, Google is having superior advantage in its search engine business services which is playing very effective role in increasing the user privacy (Tavani, 2011).

The company has immense resources and infrastructure to develop technologies to establish user privacy and security. The company should minimize the amount of information used by it and create robust security system to prevent any breach to happen. The company should provide in detail its privacy laws and use of information to its entire customer before making them signing in to the company’s products. Moreover, the company should also make it clear the amount of information it is sharing with the third party users. In the current privacy laws of the company, it states that it shares the obtained information with the company’s partners. However, the content and the amount of information shared by the company are not clearly mentioned. It should work on updating its privacy policy so that no sensitive information of the customers is shared on the internet. It should also focus on developing products in which the consumers have the option to turn off certain privacy invading features according to their preference. In order to examine the current social trend and consumer preference, the company can conduct online survey wherein the customer is aware that his choices will be used for the company’s business (Kenyon, 2016).

With the finalization of the data privacy laws in the European Union and many other countries, the internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are concerned about heavy penalties. These companies rely on the user’s information to conduct their business. Google use the information obtained from the search queries and interest of the customers and sell it to its customers. The newly imposed privacy laws will allow more control to the customers of their information. The companies are also concerned about heavy penalties and fined imposed upon them in case of accidental privacy breaches (Lansdown & Scaife, 2017).

Communities

In addition to the financial losses, the companies will also have to make changes in the manner they handle the customer data. The companies have to change the manner in which the customer data is collected, stored and shared with other companies. The changes in the data handling can impact the financial profits and its turnover in the long run. The financial impact of the privacy laws is also dependent upon the current level of the privacy safeguards that the company has implemented as well as the privacy risks that a company is willing to take in future. In the case of Google, the company has been accused of deception and several breaches in the privacy laws. In the light of these new referendums, the company has to make some radical changes in its daily operations and key business practices to align with the new privacy laws (Beck, 2016).

The companies also suffer from potential loss to the brand image and the customer confidence, if a new security breach comes into light. At present, there are significant numbers of customers who are concerned about the privacy controls of the company. Such incidence will result in further loss of customer trust and decrease the usage of the company’s browsers. Due to the newly arisen consumer awareness for the privacy and information security, many small web browsers have arisen who have created consumer privacy as their unique selling point (USP).

Several privacy advocators state that the internet companies engage in the privacy violations wherein the user is unaware of them. Therefore, it is a serious security and privacy concern. The users unknowingly reveal their location and interest and this information is used by company and sometimes by the unethical hackers for their personal benefit. The privacy options of Google do not allow them to opt out of this tracking feature and the company forcibly tracks their information (Gilbert, 2015).

However, laws and regulations against this feature will prevent the company to offer advertisers the ability to target their advertisements to the customers who desire them.  Snatching this feature away from Google will prevent the company to generate its revenue.

Conclusion

Google is a leading multinational internet organization. In the recent years, the company has emerged as the biggest internet company with technically advanced and easy to use product offerings. The most important product of the company is its search engine which is central to all internet activities. Google chrome holds maximum market share in the search engine market. It is famous for providing highly accurate, relevant and fast results. However, the use of previous search queries from the user to provide relevant results is a breach of the customer’s privacy. The customers feed information in the search browser thinking that they information is shared only with the machine and themselves and reveal several aspects of their lives which they do not even share with their close friends and family members. This information is crucial for the company’s operations as it base its search results on it. The company also utilizes this information with the advertisers for more relevant advertisements. Google has implemented a strategy in which it protects the interest of all the stakeholders. The major stakeholders of the company are its customers, government, employees and the community. It abides by the privacy law and controls the privacy of all the users. Along with it, the company is also trying to implement strategies to maintain its profitability without compromising the security of the users. Google is implementing a privacy statement which every user has to sign before using its products. It has also increased its security systems so that no third party hackers use the information of the company. The increased global regulations have an adverse impact on the company’s profitability; however, it can establish robust security systems in the light of these laws.

References

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Beckstrom, M. (2015). Protecting Patron Privacy: Safe Practices for Public Computers: Safe Practices for Public Computers. ABC-CLIO.

Bodogh, Z. (2011). Privacy Issues of the Internet Search Engines – In The Light Of European Union Data Protection Legislation. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology  5(2), pp. 163-176.

Fischer-Hübner, S., Lambrinoudakis, C., & Pernul, G. (2009).  Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business: 6th International Conference, TrustBus 2009, Linz, Austria, September 3-4, 2009, Proceedings. Springer Science & Business Media.

Gilbert, D. (2015). Europe’s Sweeping Data Privacy Reforms Put Google, Facebook And Apple In Regulatory Crosshairs. IB Times. Retrieved 25 January 2017 from https://www.ibtimes.com/europes-sweeping-data-privacy-reforms-put-google-facebook-apple-regulatory-crosshairs-2228193

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Hafner, K. (2006). Philanthropy Google’s Way: Not the Usual. The New York Times. Retrieved 25 January 2017 from https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/technology/14google.html

Harrison, J. S., & Wicks, A. C. (2013). Stakeholder theory, value, and firm performance. Business ethics quarterly, 23(01), 97-124.

Kenyon, A.T. (2016). Comparative Defamation and Privacy Law. Cambridge University Press.

Lansdown, S., & Scaife, L. (2017). Google, privacy and data protection: One step beyond (the law)? Computer Weekly. Retrieved 25 January 2017 from https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Google-Privacy-and-Data-Protection-One-Step-Beyond-the-Law

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Meyer, P. (2016). Google Stakeholders & Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Panmore Institute. Retrieved 25 January 2017 from https://panmore.com/google-stakeholders-corporate-social-responsibility-csr-analysis 

Tavani, H.T. (2011). Ethics and Technology: Controversies, Questions, and Strategies for Ethical Computing. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Tene, O. (2008). What Google Knows: Privacy And Internet Search Engines. Utah Law Review 4.