PLC’s meet SJW’s

Remember when business’s were just that, business’s that were simply involved of the business of making things? Things that you would then buy, if another business didn’t make a similar product that was better, that is. Better quality maybe, or better suited to your needs, or simply sold for a much better price. It was really quite simple, they made stuff that we bought. A nice transactional arrangement that suited everyone and more importantly, one in which everyone understood the role they they played.

But now it seems that the bigger a business is, the more profit it makes from whatever it does, then the more it needs the people that either buy or use the thing that they make, to think good things about them, so that they keep on being their customers. And if customers of competitor business’s also happen to think good things about them as well, in time and with enough good things thought, those potential customers might become actual ones.

Google today carry on the homepage of their search engine a link to ‘Discover Ballroom’ where one can explore and find out more about ‘its vibrant culture, history and importance.’ I have mixed feelings about this. Not because I don’t think its a story that shouldn’t be told, far from it, but rather the fact that a business, in this instance Google, is co-opting a ‘vibrant culture’ in order that good things are thought about it. Google aren’t the only business as much as in the business of selling us things as selling us the idea that they’re not just a business at all, that they don’t have a primary legal obligation that maximise returns to its shareholders, but they are in fact on the side of the angels. They’re all at it.

Or maybe, it’s me being cynical, maybe everyone involved is happy with arrangement. That Google are celebrating a hitherto largely unknown part of life’s rich tapestry for no other reason than it deserves to be celebrated. Quite possibly.