Is Google’s Decision a Victory for Corporate Values?

Communication professionals spend considerable time and resources working with corporate executives to create a vision, mission, and values that help to guide the company’s actions. Their goal is to get company employees to “live” those values. Looking at recent actions at Google, it appears its communication executives have succeeded.

According to reporting from Gizmodo and other media, Google executives have chosen not to pursue additional work to help the U.S. military use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze drone footage. The CEO of Google Cloud acknowledged that an employee backlash against the work played a role in the decision. Thousands of employees signed a petition asking company executives to cancel the contract; some even resigned in protest. Later this week, the company plans to unveil new ethical principles about its use of AI.

When Google first became a public company in 2004, one of its core values was “don’t be evil.” Today, the company website states that “our goal has been to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. Not just for some. For everyone.” However, a large percentage of Google employees apparently didn’t see how helping the military improve drone attacks was improving lives.

It’s important to note the Defense Department contract was a tiny percentage of Google’s business Maybe employees would feel differently or executives would react differently if military work was a significant share of company operations. But for now, Google workers not only accepted the company’s stated values, they took action to remind top executives that their decision didn’t align with them.

To me, that’s called “living.”