Adding Value

“Google announced Thursday that it had come up with a plan that begins to fulfill the pledge it made to investors when it went public nearly four years ago to reserve 1 percent of its profit and equity to ‘make the world a better place.’

“The philanthropy the company has set up — Google.org, or DotOrg as Googlers call it — will spend up to $175 million in its first round of grants and investments over the next three years...

“DotOrg officials said they had decided to spend the money on five initiatives: disease and disaster prevention; improving the flow of information to hold governments accountable in community services; helping small and medium-size enterprises; developing renewable energy sources that are cheaper than coal; and investing in the commercialization of plug-in vehicles...

“Larry Brilliant, a medical doctor who took on the role of director of Google.org 18 months ago, … likened his moral quandary in figuring out how to spend Google.org’s money to that faced by a saint wandering the streets of Benares.

“‘There are 500 steps between the road and the Ganges,’ he said. ‘On every step are beggars, lepers, people who have no arms or legs, people literally starving. The saint has a couple of rupees; how does a good and honorable person make a resource allocation decision? Do you weigh a hand that’s missing more than a leg? Someone who’s starving versus a sick child? In a much less dramatic way, that’s what the last 18 months have been for us.’

“DotOrg has focused on what it can do ‘uniquely,’ said Sheryl Sandberg, vice president for global online sales and operations at Google... ‘If you do things other people could do, you’re not adding value’ …

“But for all the enthusiasm for the new organization, there are critics. ‘It’s wonderful that this company is devoting massive resources to fixing big world problems, but they are taking an engineer’s perspective to them,’ said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia. ‘Machines and software are not always the answer. Global problems arise from how humans have undervalued each other and miscommunicated with each other’.”

(“Google Offers a Map for Its Philanthropy.” Harriet Rubin. www.nytimes.com, January 18, 2008)

WOVEN INTO EVERY CHALLENGE, fundamental to every opportunity, are human beings. Human competence may address the fundamentals while human distinctiveness can open unlimited potential.