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Comment by omouse | Hacker News Reader

> further strengthening management's choices

I think people are forgetting that each of those Google (former) employees have shares and are also shareholders and shareholders will start to get pissed when management is screwing up and will call for a new CEO or new execs or a new board to be put into place that will get Google back on track: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/technology/tech-workers-c...

> I doubt the employee protests will win out here in the long run.

If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits.

There's already activist shareholders asking for more gender diversity data for example: https://www.fastcompany.com/40474369/activist-investor-deman...

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> each of those Google (former) employees have shares

They have class C shares, which do not have any voting rights. Shareholders without voting rights have absolutely no power to influence policy.

> If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits.

You're making a lot of jumps of logic here so I'll split things up:

> If they lose more employees

They're not bleeding employees so quickly that it will cause a problem, the overwhelming majority of Googlers will not leave over this. There's just a few of them, enough to make headlines but not enough to cause any real issue.

> tarnishing the brand of Google

They'd have to tarnish it a lot to get people to stop wanting to work for Google. Even with the latest headlines and controversies, it's still one of the best paying companies out there with awesome benefits, interesting work, and prestigious status. Even employees who are uncomfortable with some of the choices the company is making will think twice before giving all that up.

> which leads to less profits

In the long run this might be true. I'll use the counter-example of Microsoft though: they were the demon for decades and are still one of the most valuable companies in the world. If a tarnished brand for employees guaranteed less profits, they would have died a long time ago.

> They have class C shares, which do not have any voting rights. Shareholders without voting rights have absolutely no power to influence policy.

You're right, they're using class C for compensation: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/052215/goog-or...

But that doesn't prevent employees from buying up class A voting shares, though:

> A shares receive one vote, C shares receive no votes, and B shares receive 10 votes

There's more investors and employees than there are the founders so perhaps it's possible for them to get enough A shares to outvote the super-vote B shares? Unlikely, but possible...

Thanks for offering your opinion, I agree with your thoughts.

> perhaps it's possible for them to get enough A shares to outvote the super-vote B shares

Nope. The company has control over how many class A and B shares exist, and currently between Sergey, Larry, and Eric they control over 50% of the voting rights as determined by shares: https://www.morningstar.com/articles/820137/which-stock-shar...

So there's absolutely no way any employees would be able force anything through a vote. They'd need to convince at least one of those three people.

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