One of the real reasons I am second-guessing whether to look for VC money is that I am afraid of what happens when we have shareholders, and even more worried about what happens when there is public ownership of stock.
The problem here is that maximizing shareholder value means to some extent working on elevating stock prices. So you can't do anything that might threaten stock prices once you go public.
WL Gore, IIRC, went public, then put 15% of their profits into a buyback program on behalf of employees and eventually bought all their stock back, and then delisted themselves from the stock exchanges. I really admire that they did this. Now they still have stockholders: employees.....
Someone said "This makes business sense for Google". I said "Well, it might, but you forgot to take into account the downsides, e.g. X, Y, and Z".
This has nothing to do with whether Google should or shouldn't do it.
"If we're discussing whether it makes business sense, IMO you're only looking at the upside for Google."
I didn't comment at all on the morality issue and whether Google should do this or not.
Think about yourself, if you are a programmer: would you take on the task to develop a new web site for holocaust deniers? It's just business, after all... If you lose the freedom to pick your jobs, what is the point, really? I'd rather close down my company (but I think you can't do that as a publicly traded company, either).