Corporate Personhood basically says that corporations should be treated, for most legal intents and purposes, as a person. Thus, corporations have the right to free speech and are protected by many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights. However, there are subtle differences of course. Corporations clearly cannot marry, cannot vote, and have no Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The ramifications of this principle mean that corporations can sue or be sued (thank goodness!), make and enforce contracts, buy, sell, and hold property, etc. It also means that corporations cannot go to jail, raising some legal eyebrows.
A particular Google Antitrust case comes to mind regarding the moral obligations of a corporation. In June of this year, the European Commision fined Google nearly $3 billion for for having “abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service.” While I do not want solely Google+ reviews showing up on my Google searches, I don’t believe Google is wrong to promote their own products on their service.
Google is unquestionably the market leader in search engines and several other online areas, so it’s understandable how monopolistic and antitrust issues arise. In publishing only Google+ reviews for say a hotel search, I don’t think Google was keeping the consumer’s best interests directly in mind. Competitive analysis shows that many many more reviews existed when searched on services like Yelp–as a consumer, I would want the best data to show up in my search results and that often means the source with the most data.
However, I don’t think Google can be held to this standard of giving every company equal playing time by the simple fact that Google needs to generate revenue. Ironically, in order to continue to bring the best experience to consumers, Google relies on advertising revenue and continued growth of its own services. In other words, to put consumers first, you may say it has to put itself first. Ben Thompson expertly underscores this point:
“I agree that Google has a monopoly in search, but as the Commission itself notes that is not a crime; the reality of this ruling, though, is that making any money off that monopoly apparently is. And, by extension, those that blindly support this decision are agreeing that products that succeed by being better for users ought not be able to make money.”
In other words, Google is big but not necessarily “bad.” In fact, I would argue they are looking out for the best interest of the consumer–after all, consumers freely choose to use the service or not.
Companies aren’t quite afforded the same rights as individual persons and they aren’t individual persons, so it’s illogical to equate personal morality with corporate morality. Luckily, our laws and courts understand this and account for the nuances of corporate actions. Our laws thus reinforce the ethical obligations by which corporations are expected to abide. So yes, ethics apply to corporations, but not the same ones as for people…they’re not people, after all.