This refers to Devangshu Datta’s “Premium on business ethics” (January 16). It raised several interesting points.
The attacks on Google were described as ultra sophisticated. Details of the intellectual property loss or financial compromise or even the hack attacks are unknown, or at least not known in the public domain.
Importantly, companies have been victims of sustained attacks but it raises concerns about how much of this comes out in the open. Would a compromised bank ever disclose that lakhs of rupees have been palmed off from it? It would be disastrous in this age of cut-throat competition and customer acquisition. At the same time, how would they ever face the wrath of their investors, not to mention potential lawsuits, once they disclosed this?
The write-up also raises an interesting point about Google bending over backwards to please the censors; but when its own interests got in the picture, it voiced its concerns about “hack attacks”. China contributes 1.5 per cent of Google’s total global revenues, and Google saw in China a lucrative market in the huge population of Internet users. Google’s decision to pull out of China appears to be hot air. I remain cynical about an MNC rediscovering its ethics. It seems partly motivated by behind-the-scenes American parleys, to deflect public attention, create a new monster (because the Russian card barely appeals to the newer generation), focus on Chinese “human rights record” bogey, new-age communism and perhaps to gain public sympathy or all of them together.
Abhishek Puri, New Delhi
