If I were a shareholder, I wouldn't want my company to be running around taking stands on social issues unrelated to the business of the company. Let Sergey advocate against proposition 8 in his private life if he feels that strongly about it.

The founders, their ethics, morals, and actions are in many senses responsible for the culture they have created and the products therefrom. They didn't even try to monetize Google in the first period: they were just trying to make good technology, and help people out.

You cannot extinguish this one flame without extinguishing others.

Then don't invest in Google, if you don't like how it's run. Buying a couple shares in a company doesn't mean you get to set the tone and policies of it. If enough people feel like you do then Google will suffer, as it should. I suspect this kind of unconventionality is a big part of what has made Google so successful. That's the primary reason I like this.

It's not just Sergey's position. It's Google's position. And it is very related to Google, since there are a lot of gay software engineers, this is very important to many of them, and Google wants to attract and keep these employees.

A software engineers sexuality should have nothing to do with his/her work. It's like google asking people to vote for obama because they want to attract and keep black engineers. Bullshit, that's right.

No. Google would have to tell people to stop being racist, not to vote for Obama, for that to make any sense.

Also, my sexuality SHOULD have nothing to do with my work, but if I were affected adversely by this or other similar discriminatory nonsense, it would most likely affect my work. I daresay the same would apply to anyone regardless of sexuality.

Prop 8 is about more than just marriage, it's about what comes with marriage.

Here are two very practical things that are directly tied to marriage/"partnership" in the US:

- Health care

- Immigration rights

So, yeah, it shouldn't matter, but it does.

If software engineers in gay couples are discriminated against in California, they'll go elsewhere. I know of at least one case exactly like that - they moved to Canada.

I guess that this provides the cover for Google to discuss these issues in an official channel.

Companies do this all the time, directly and indirectly, i.e. on gay rights, what kind of benefits to extend to gay employees (see http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/cei.htm). Why is Google and Sergey's public announcement of this so surprising?

Agreed. I even removed my political affiliation from my Facebook profile since I'm "friends" with a number of business contacts there and I'd rather their opinion of our business not be formed by my personal political views.

I think that's my all-time favorite XKCD. I read it whenever I feel that I'm starting to hedge myself in, and it always leads me on to doing things better.

I'd go so far as to state that this comic (and a few things like it, of course, but this is the most memorable) changed the course of my life quite considerably in my senior year, and that that influenced where I am today.

Yeah could be a real shit storm. I see a massive uprising in the valley while the SFPD sends an invading army into mountain view... courageous.