For example, I value pacifism. I think non-violence is almost always the right choice, and feel we should work towards a world of peace.
However, if I saw someone attacking my daughter, I might use violence to stop them if I felt it was the only way to protect her.
This doesn't mean that I don't value non-violence, or that my non-violence stance is meaningless. It just means that my value of keeping my daughter safe is more important to me than non-violence.
Google sees "organising information" as its mission. My desk would currently make an excellent opportunity to organise some information. Are they going to pay someone to sort all these papers? Probably not. Does that mean they have sold out their values? Unlikely...
You're hiding some of that range in the phrase:
> push comes to shove,..
...which makes the idea rather meaningless. I've shown one side above, the other is equally trivial: When Google has few billion dollars it can invest either into wearable sensors for health tech, or opening a Pizza chain, they are more likely to go with the former, even if they have similar expected returns.
If "push coming to shove" is intended to mean a situation where the very existence of Google is at stake, then they'll choose to live another day, even if they have to scale back their ambitions. I doubt anybody would expect them to behave differently.
As for examples: it seems that Apple is forgoing some profits by not participating in the big data grab. Yes, it might also be a good business decision. But it takes some commitment to values to be motivated enough, and to have the courage, to make a decision so markedly different than what the competition does.
Google leaving China is another example. Yes, they may soon return. But in the meantime they left a few billion on the table.
Anthropomorphizing publicly held companies is quite a bit more silly. Just because I have values and goals besides money doesn't mean that companies do; I also go to the restroom and breathe oxygen.
It's often impossible to say conclusively whether money is being left on the table in the cases that you've mentioned, because there's a PR hit taken when certain things are done that could ultimately reduce revenue. In the case of Apple, the fact that the flipside of fairly tyrannical possessiveness over their customers is a vigorous defense of their customers from outside entities makes the lock-in and intentional incompatibility and obfuscation seem almost like a hug. Without that defense, it would just feel like a snare - being known to give anyone access to anything willingly would definitely affect Apple's sales in a big way. Courage in that case would be to exploit that data, figure out a way to sell that idea to the users or to conceal it from the users, and risk a lot of users abandoning the platform.
Also, Google doing what it takes to make it in China might endanger their increasing integration in the US government. The brave thing would be to try to work both at the same time.
That's because we are people, not organizations.
>Google leaving China is another example. Yes, they may soon return. But in the meantime they left a few billion on the table.
Just because of bad PR/backslash. They were perfectly OK to work there.
Where this fails is when a company actually achieves its mission. At that point, its original mission is taken for granted, but all of the negative consequences of that mission are suddenly on everyone's mind.
For example, Microsoft's original mission was "A computer on every desk, all running Microsoft software." Throughout the 80s and early 90s, that meant making MS-DOS and Windows easier to use, making Office handle more of the tasks needed for a modern office, and getting distribution deals so that all of these came pre-loaded. Customers benefitted from the increasing computerization, they forked over lots of money, Bill Gates became the richest man on earth. But after around 1998, Microsoft basically succeeded in that, people already had a computer on their desk running Microsoft software, and the biggest problem on their minds was that Microsoft had a stranglehold on PC software and was unfairly killing off new innovations in software.
Google's initial mission statement was "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." When search sucked, email sucked, online maps weren't a thing, finding a book meant going to a library, finding an academic paper meant forking over hundreds to Elsevier, and "web browser" meant IE6, this was a huge service to humanity. But then around 2010, they succeeded at all of these, the baseline became "I can find anything I want now", and the huge questions were what kind of information does Google have on us and what sort of nefarious purposes could they use it for?
Facebook's mission was "Make the world a more open and connected place." The world is now a more open and connected place. The result is that people are routinely put in contact with folks whose views they find abhorrent, and that you can influence an election from the other side of the world, and that Facebook has all our personal data. While the world was still cut off from each other, everyone was happy to sign up; now that we're all on one big social network, they're miserable.
Once the mission statement is no longer a problem that needs solving, then the bullshit starts. Without an actual reason for the company to exist or for anyone to do the work they're ostensibly doing, people fall back on "Well, might as well make as much money as we can."
when these huge companies have succeeded what they set out to achieve, they are ultimately left without direction
in theory, that means the company would disband. mission accomplished, let's all go home -- right?
however, large organizations and all those who depend on them for pay cannot disappear overnight -- which leads to the type of ethically gray decisionmaking that creates this issue