Google still needs to try a lot harder to do the right thing

Shortly before agreeing, early last year, to pay token back taxes on a decade’s worth of UK-generated profits, Google also abolished its global slogan ‘Don’t be evil’. Instead it adopted a code of conduct that urged employees to ‘do the right thing’ — but at least in one important respect, they didn’t. Marks & Spencer, HSBC, Audi and numerous other top brands found their banner adverts displayed alongside a variety of YouTube hate videos which Google had failed to exclude, apparently because it did not have sufficient resources to monitor all the video content that was being uploaded at the rate of 400 hours per minute.

For fear of losing a chunk of its UK ad revenues, the company has apologised and promised to do better. But the episode reminds us again of the slipperiness of the 21st-century digital mega-corporation.
In Google’s case, that has meant paying taxes akin to those paid by terrestrial companies only as a negotiated last resort when embarrassed into doing so, while trying to duck responsibility for publishing much of the vilest and most disturbing material on the planet.