Evil Inc - Google?

Why is it that as an organization or company grows large, it seems to start operating on the other side of moral line? Does it not seem like a pattern that seems to be followed by every behemoth out there?

This story is not about a malicious person. There are many of them out there, and we can put them aside for now. This story is about the successful organizations that have grown immensely. They start of humbly with noble mission statements, and they stick to it. The initial groups of people are most of the times, people with moral values. It is these moral values that give them success and they grow as an organization. From this stage onwards, they seem to be in news for all sort malicious acts.

Yes, this is about the code that Google "borrowed" from Sohu. (News credit: Thilak)

What is it about the nature of a large organization that has made Google come up in similar news? For that matter, what is it about large organizations in general, that makes them deteriorate from their noble mission statements?

Some of the causes for this are obvious and others are a bit more subtle. I will try to break them down into two categories.

• The Observer
• The Observed

The Observer

It may be that the media zeros in on those companies that are large. I mean, who would be interested in some company with handful of people stealing something from another similar company. The media in general, and lately the blogosphere in general seems to go after the behemoths to chip in some visibility for themselves when such incidents occur. Do we blame the media or do we blame the consumers of the media?

The Observed

It might also be that these large organizations have a tendency to deviate from the chosen path. The leaders might be well aware of how they must approach their goal. But they may not be capable of seeing to it that the path taken to the goal, along with the goal, is understood by the rest of the organization. Asking ordinary people to do extraordinary work without giving them guidance over the path to take, will at one point or another, make them take a wrong path. And in general, as with the rest of the universe, the entropy sets in on the order of the organization.

So do we blame Google for the mishap they did? And of course - do we blame the other big companies that have found themselves in the mud-pit?