Referring to this story in The Register, I’m going to make a prediction: every one of these six proposed resolutions is going to be voted down, and Google will treat them like a fart at a royal dinner party by pretending they never happened.

The resolution is bound to fail because the people who have the majority of votes are all institutional investors, and all of them have a vested interest in Google making as much money as it can. Individual investors can choose to put ethics and morals before money; large institutions cannot.

Google will ignore it because it goes against the universal religion of big businesses: profit. If Google refuses to give in to the Chinese government, then the Chinese government will order Chinese ISPs to completely block access to Google, and Google’s place will immediately be taken by a Chinese-run Google-look-alike that obeys the Chinese government. Not only would Google lose out today, they’d lose out on all future profits from China’s rapidly growing prosperity too.

Complain about it until you’re blue in the face, but it’s a fact: in the world of big business, as in the world of politics, money always trumps morals.

Mr. Thompson has to know all of the above better than I do, so what does he hope to accomplish with this?