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Monday, December 12, 2011

3 tales of corporate's common sense and social responsibility

What do Apple, Google and HP have in common ? they are corporations, committed to competition, and strive to compete. But inside the competition one sometimes forget, even if one is a corporation (or especially so) that not every mean is proper for that final end of being the most competitive.

I ran into 3 stories today, and each reiterates that sad lesson, how far competition can drive corporations, somtimes....

Lets start with Apple. Some of Apple's recent actions have made it look like a Parents Troll itself, but we all know that Apple is much more than that. But now TechCrunch comes with a sad tale, revealing what appears to be Apple's deal with a devil of sorts - a known Patents Troll. If true, this story of Apple negotiation with a Patents Troll, reaching in an undisclosed agreement in which Apple transferred several patents to the troll in exchange for a usage license in all involved patents, is very sad. Although one's first thought might be to praise Apple's business genius, being able to make a nagging Troll into another weapon in its wars against competitors, it soon becomes clear how cowardly and anti social this policy may be. If true, instead of fighting and making Patent Trollism go away, Apple has fed the Troll and made it stronger.

Only minutes after reading about Apple, I ran into an interesting story about Google. A recent report testing the security of the 3 top browsers and revealing Firefox lags behind chrome and iExplorer significantly. The research focused on a very interesting angle of security: what can be done from within the browser, assuming the hacker has gotten this far, stressing on Sandboxing, Javascript JIT hardening and Plugins security. My problem ? The research has been funded by Google.
As if two news items regarding problematic corporate behavior are not enough for one day, I had to bump into another too-good-to-miss story. It is reported that HP considers cat hairs as a biological hazard which voids the warranty of a  laptop. Considering the attractiveness of this story, one has to wonder how much time will it take for HP before they settle. Why can't companies learn more from Amazon about the right way to treat customers ? Why do corporations let the bottom line make them forget human values, such as common sense and social responsibility?



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