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The New York Times today (May 21) covers a report on a study commissioned by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Education that “tries to put a dollar value on the state’s natural resources, from the Jersey Shore to the Kittatinny Mountains, to places like, well, Weehawken.” The article reports that values ranged from about $1,470 per acre in the Pine Barrens to $42,000 for the “environmentally essential sand dunes” at Beaches like Sandy Hook and Sea Girt.

The Times has also reported, most recently in April, on a similar study by UC Davis experts that assigned a monetary value to New York City’s trees (see “Maybe Only God Can Make a Tree,” April 18 by David K. Randall), specifically accounting for values including the carbon they sequester and the real estate price improvements they confer.

Both stories indicate to us that policymakers are finding social return on investment analysis to be an increasingly useful tool to raise awareness about all the benefits of natural assets when budget decisions are being made.

As a small shareholder in Google (I bought my shares over my Charles Schwab account on the Dutch auction when they IPO’d and I’m a fan of that innovative method), I decided to head over to Google headquarters in nearby Mountain View today to check out the annual shareholders’ meeting. I thought it would be fun to tell my grandkids one day that I’d seen Schmidt and Page back when, and also because I wanted to hear what they had to say about the proposal of the New York City Comptroller about Google’s censorship.
Google has recently launched Google.cn, the version that will open automatically when you surf the web in China. (I suspect it will be the only version a person there can get to). Google has agreed to the Chinese government’s requests to censor certain content from appearing in search results. As the steward of two of the country’s largest public pension funds, whose beneficiaries apparently have an interest in free speech according to him, the Comptroller had proposed that shareholders support a proposal that Google stop doing this censoring, which directors say would mean Google would not be able to do business in China. Since founders Brin and Page own almost 60% of the shares any proposal they don’t support can’t pass, including this one, so it was a symbolic, but thought-provoking, gesture.
Unfortunately though not unexpectedly, Google’s chief legal officer made only a brief statement that this was deemed not in the best interests of the company’s mission, so I don’t know all the debate that must have happened in the executive boardroom about whether or not to censor. But think they missed an opportunity to summarize the thesis they based that ultimate decision on, and let the shareholders and public know.
After all, Google has become a huge company with a huge influence on peoples’ daily lives faster than any prior company in history. They envision, in CEO Schmidt’s words, becoming analagous to “the big bank in the sky” that causes us to be able to withdraw money from our own bank accounts out of any ATM anywhere in the world, except with Google instead of money it’s our information… which on the one hand is really neat, but on the other it is a bit creepy too. I said during the question/answer session that I have heard more than a few people begin in recent months to voice their concerns that Google is becoming the next Microsoft, not in terms of their business model but just in terms of being such a big dog that their warm and fuzzy brand image is beginning to chip and reveal that what is underneath might just be the Matrix.
On the one hand I don’t think this budding fear is accurate– one of the most fascinating and inspiring things about Google is the way it is growing into an incredibly multifaceted platform that fosters and rewards individual innovation and expression– they’re becoming masters of what Chris Anderson has termed The Long Tail. In addition to the vibe on the company’s campus that makes obvious to any visitor of how savvily Page has engineered the workplace culture to bring out the best in his employees, one only has to surf around on the googlemaps where thanks to Google some guy has made his own personal vacation all the way down route 66 available to be relived by anyone with sufficient bandwidth (and time on their hands) to view it… and then there’s the GoogleEarth mashup of Darfur that has made visual and somehow more immediate the atrocity there, and the heartfelt gratitude of the nonprofits whose impact has been transformed by Google grants at the shareholder meeting, like the child abuse hotline that became a nationwide resource overnight because now people can find it. One could go on and on.
And yet, this is a company that is having a direct impact on millions, and now another billion, lives. They have ten directors. How in their investment deliberations do they account for the ways they may impact people not in the room? It is a question people have begun to ask, and to wonder what, if any, check and balance ought there to be. Publicly-listed companies in the Fast Company HIP 21 we just worked on with collaborator Paul Herman have begun recognizing the strategic relevance of measuring and communicating their overall social impact. Google has more than enough substance to show that it knows how to harness the collective creativity to create massive good and massive wealth– does it also have a way of harnessing the collective wisdom? So far, my opinion is that they seem to be doing all right. But once a company gets this powerful, a counterbalancing force does rise up, and that is skepticism.
Google has a chance to stay ahead of this and keep the goodwill it has earned. I hope they will choose to do so.