Forms of marketing: ethics vs just going for profit.

Over the years, there seems to be a moving shift into consumers interest into business that have an ethical basis. Fast becoming some of the more common questions before "how much can you do it for?" are questions like: "is it environmentally friendly", or "Is your business affiliated with any sort of charity". I have always felt that the way Microsoft has been developed has been one of "all is fair in business" by kicking down anybody who might want to share the spotlight. On the other hand, the Google brand has always come across as being more ethical and cooperative with the broader community.

However, a lot of the money Microsoft gets out of their earnings is being used for charity and improving the world, such as building the school of the future, a super high tech school for less fortunate kids in Philadelphia . Google may also not be really 'doing no evil'. A good example would be their pact with China to activily help censor the internet for billions of chinese people, the tiananmen square incident to be exact. Also consider their link-farm-sites on which they put the ads of smaller advertisers and their recent decision to cut off sites with not enough traffic from some of their advertising-programs simply because it didn't make Google enough money.

In conclusion, the question I would like to raise is, is there really something like ethics in business? And should there be? is being successful enough or must the notion of maximising profit be aboded to as suggested in econs?

Chan Zhi Yang