The one thing that can be said about 2013 so far is that attitudes on tax have changed. This is Philip Stephens in the FT this morning writing about Google:
For his part, Mr Schmidt says he is “puzzled” by the furore. After all, the only enforceable duty on Google is to obey the law. Where he is wrong is in expecting others to agree that this makes it a decent corporate citizen.
As Stephens' notes, it doesn't. In which case he concludes:
The honest thing to say on this reputational point would be that he really doesn't much care.
But what is now true is that most people do. And companies that don't will find it harder in that world.
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Google knows it has the best search engine on the web and it knows people will use its services as a consequence. Even if most people care about the tax companies pay very few of those people will decide to use a different search engine that gives worse results. As long as people keep searching the advertisers will keep advertising.
I am going to have to change
I’ve mentioned this before here. I’ve been using duckduckgo as a search engine for some time now, in protest at the Google bamboozle. It has no adverts and no tracking.
Those who object to Google’s obtuseness should just switch.
https://duckduckgo.com/
I was listening on the World Service last night to Mariana Mazzucato talking about her new book (will buy as soon as available) The Entrepreneurial State. She said that Google was given the algorithms which created their business, developed with state funding. See http://www.marianamazzucato.com/blog/Steve_Jobs_and_Industrial_Policy/?tag=Entrepreneurial%20State.
She’s great
Warmly recommended
Why am I not surprised. Like much of real innovation and blue sky thinking this is financed by the state, because much of business today seems to be about making a “fast buck”. A case of people scrambling and falling over themselves to “make it” and then to “get out”. fewer and fewer seem to be in it for the long haul…