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> Salesforce is a public company, which means the CEO has a legal duty to optimize for maximum benefit for the shareholders of said company under the law.

That's a common misconception. It's not true.

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Not Statute, but case law. See eBay vs. Newmark. Unless I'm misinterpreting something about it, in which case, can you explain? (Genuine question there.)

The opinion is quite readable. Essentially the judge says that he's only applying that standard (called the Unocal test) on "defensive actions by a target corporation’s board of directors in a takeover context". On the action that didn't fit that profile, despite being potentially harmful to eBay, he deferred to their best judgment.

I'm no lawyer, but the way I read that decision is: do what you think best, just don't purposefully mine the field against one of your shareholders.

Even if that were true and it were also true that privacy features would harm shareholders, then lobbying to make those privacy features mandatory would itself be acting against shareholder interests.

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