What Does a Big Search Company Use Its Profits For?
Tags: Ekoru, Ethics, Morality, Internet, Search Engines

What Does a Big Search Company Use Its Profits For? ekoru Follow Mar 4 · 10 min read

Would you continue to be a customer of a company that behaved unethically?

The Internet and search engines are free to use. But when you use a search engine, someone makes a profit. How is a company and their owners who make 70% of their revenue from search advertising using their profits?

Are they behaving ethically? Are they behaving morally? Are they being evil? Would you continue to be a customer of a company if the answer to any of those questions was “No”?

Here are some of the things a large search engine company (we’ll let you guess which one) and their owners use their profits for. If you’ve used their search engine as a customer, this is what you’re helping to fund…

Two Mega-Yachts Worth $40 million and $80 million

The Dragonfly. Photo: Joseph Brimacombe

Each of the owners purchased private yachts measuring 194 feet and 240 feet. They boast a dance club, cinema, a helicopter pad, and full time crews.

Business Insider & SuperYachtFan

A Full Sized 767 Private Jet For $25 Million

The two owners bought a 767 jet designed to carry 180 people, purchased for an estimated $10 million. Luxury refurbishments for an additional $15 million reduced the passenger capacity down to 50 people.

Wall Street Journal

Build a Private Airport For The Fleet of Company Jets at a Cost of $82 Million

Apparently 8 private jets shared amongst three company executives wasn’t enough. They needed a private airport closer to their office so they could jet away at a moment’s notice. The company secured rights to a private terminal at San Jose International with their partner Signature Flight Support.

Forbes

Fund Climate Denial Groups

Despite trying to tout their green credentials and concern for the planet, revenue from your searches is used to fund climate denial groups. This includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute which was instrumental in the USA’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and the State Policy Network which claimed, “there is no climate crisis”, “our natural environment is getting better”, and described Greta Thunberg’s “climate delusion hysterics”.

Other contributions made to organisations with a climate denial stance include, the American Conservative Union, Mercatus Center, Heritage Foundation, and Heritage Action.

The Guardian

Organise a Climate Change Change Conference Using 114 Private Jets and a Fleet of Italian Sports Cars

While everyone is trying to do their bit for the environment by sorting their trash for recycling, cycling instead of driving, using reusable water bottles, and shopping with canvas bags, others want to show their concern for the environment in a different way.

The company used profits from your searches to organise a climate conference which essentially amounted to a luxury slumber party on an Italian island with a massive carbon footprint.

A-List celebrities flew in on 114 private jets, arrived on $400 million mega-yachts, and were ferried around in Maserati sports cars. A total of $20 million was spent on this three day event.

News.com.au

Violate Children’s Privacy and Pay a Fine of $170 Million

The Federal Trade Commission found that the company collected personal information of children which was used to target them for advertising in violation of COPPA laws.

Their sales presentations explicitly stated that they were “a leader in reaching children age 6–11 …”. According to FTC Chairman Joe Simons, “… the company refused to acknowledge that portions of its platform were clearly directed to kids. There’s no excuse for YouTube’s violations of the law.”

FTC / FTC Exhibit A

Break Laws All Over the World and Receive Fines of $9.7 Billion

The company was fined a total of $9.7 billion in three separate European antitrust cases. Cases were brought against the company for anti-competitive behaviour and discrimination against other services. A judge involved in the cases described one of the $2.6 billion fines as “loose change” for the company.

Bloomberg

Move $40 Billion Into Tax Havens to Avoid Paying Taxes

Using a method called the “Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich” the company bounces money between Holland, Ireland, and Bermuda to avoid taxes on their revenue. So even though they sell advertising worldwide in every country, they pay almost no taxes anywhere. The company is described as struggling to find a use for the $73 billion of cash in their accounts.

The Times / The Guardian

Exploit Homeless Black People To Gather Their Biometric Data

The company engaged a sub-contractor to scan the faces of darker skinned people in an effort to gather biometric data. Homeless black people were targeted in as they would, “less likely to talk to the press” and “more likely to respond to the offer of a [$5] gift card”.

Employees were told to rush subjects through the consent forms and to hide the true purpose that the photos were being used for. One employee said, “The homeless people didn’t know what was going on at all”

Business Insider

Have Cars Drive All Over The World Sniffing Private WiFi Data From Homes and Business

Cars intended to drive around streets worldwide to capture photos for mapping data were also secretly harvesting WiFi data from homes and business as the passed by.

Wired Magazine described it as an “intentional mistake” and that it wouldn’t have been made public if not for a disclosure of documents by the Federal Communications Commission which contradicted the company’s claims that they hadn’t meant to collect the data.

Design documents show the deliberate intent to collect WiFi data and the use of the term “War Driving” which is commonly used to describe the act of driving around and gathering data on open WiFi networks.

Wired / The Guardian

Pay $105 Million in Severance to Two Executives After Allegations of Sexual Misconduct

Despite having been accused of sexual harassment, two company executives were still offered generous severance packages totalling $105 million. One of them was able to negotiate a $90 million payout instead of the $150 million stock grant initially offered. The other was initially offered $45 million which was revised down to $15 million because he was leaving to a competitor.

20,000 employees had walked out of 40 offices around the world to protest the way the company handled sexual harassment.

The Verge / CNBC

Threaten to Block an Entire Nation

The Australian government proposed new laws that would require the company to pay local news providers for news appearing on their platform. Much of the advertising revenue made by the company using local news content was funneled overseas with very little local tax being paid.

The company responded by threatening to remove all of their services from Australia if the laws were passed. Scott Morrison, the Australian Prime Minister countered with, “We don’t respond to threats. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia.”

The Australian / ABC Australia

Invest in Companies That Perform Satellite Tracking and Targeting for Military and Intelligence Agencies

Despite more than 3,000 employees signing a statement that their company, “should not be in the business of war”, Forbes describes a company that is, “still very much in the business of war”.

The company has investments in startups Orbital Insights and Planet, which supply military surveillance tools and have won $30.5 million in Defense Department and intelligence agency contracts which could “directly facilitate injury”.

Despite the noble intentions of early employees that they would be working on humanitarian and environmental applications, one former employee remarked that they went from “saving chimpanzees in Indonesia” to “finding targets in Afghanistan”

Forbes

Buy a Fighter Jet

Photo: Walter Colby

In the most bizarre acquisition, the company purchased an ex German Air Force Alpha light attack jet as part of a special deal with NASA allowing them access to the Moffett Federal Airfield which was less than four miles away from their company headquarters. The NASA agreement allows for storage of up to 9 aircraft including two helicopters and a Boeing 767 in a private hangar for a fee of $1.4 million per year.

The company had promised that the jet would be used to collect atmospheric data for NASA but that never happened and the company continued to use the airfield for thousands of private flights despite not fulfilling their end of the bargain.

The deal was made with the intention to allow company executives access to the closer Moffett airfield rather than the San Jose airport 12 miles away from company headquarters.

Tech Transparency Project / Nasa.Gov

Hire an AI Ethicist To Lead an Ethics Research Group and Then Fire Her For Writing a Research Paper Critical of the Company’s Ethics

The company had hired prominent AI researcher Timnit Gebru to co-lead their AI ethics research team. She claims she was fired after being asked to remove her name from a paper she had co-authored which contained content that the company found ‘objectionable’.

The paper in question looked at data models used by the company and how they were subject to racial and gender bias, and questioned the environmental impact of the computing resources and electricity consumed to produce these models.

Margaret Mitchell who co-led the AI ethics team with Gebru was also fired two months later.

Wired / Wired

What’s The Alternative?

Use another search engine — it really is that simple. When you use a search engine, you become their customer and they generate profits from your searches. If you care how these profits are used and find any of the activities above objectionable, then maybe you should make the change.

We’d like you to pick any ethical search engine as an alternative, and naturally we’d like you to consider ours…

Try Ekoru.org

Ekoru.org is an ethical search engine which donates 60% of it’s revenue to clean our oceans and replant ocean seagrass and is powered by run-of-river hydroelectricity to ensure every search is as environmentally friendly as possible.

Our partner Big Blue Ocean Cleanup cleans oceans and coastlines around the world, as well as rescue teams helping marine animals in distress.

Our partner Operation Posidonia replants ocean seagrass which captures CO2 from our atmosphere at a rate 40 times faster than tropical rainforest trees.

Operation Posidonia Team Replanting Ocean Seagrass

Whenever you click on a sponsored advertisement we get some ad revenue. So you can help clean and reforest the ocean with every search.

Sponsored Search Results are Clearly Labelled

Ekoru.org works on any desktop or mobile browser. Our browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, and our mobile apps for iPhone or Android let you change your search engine so you can use it every day.

Use Ekoru.org on your computer or phone

Dark mode is so 2019… We have cool features like ocean inspired colour schemes for desktop browsers to match your mood or preference.

Your search. Your way.

We’re the only search engine that lets you search for what3word addresses. A new way of navigating that let’s you find any location on the planet in just 3 words. You can try to find your what3words address here.

Searching for a what3words address

And best of all every search on Ekoru.org is as environmentally friendly as possible. Our servers all powered by run of river hydroelectricity giving you confidence that you’re leaving the smallest CO2 footprint as possible.

The hydro-electric plant powering our servers

Our pages are also optimized to be as small as possible. Since transporting data across the Internet has an energy and accompanying CO2 cost, the smaller a page is the less CO2 is generated transmitting it to your computer or phone.

Our pages generate less CO2 being transported across the Internet to you computer or phone

Make the ethical choice and change your search engine today!