Sunday, December 13, 2009

Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 1st edition

Top end of the scale is 15. It's a linear scale.
  1. Philip Morris: 15
  2. Exxon: 13 (see link to #1)
  3. Goldman Sachs: 12
  4. Facebook: 12
  5. For profit health insurance companies: 11
  6. AT&T and Verizon (tied): 10
  7. Microsoft: 10
  8. Average publicly traded company: 8
  9. Google: 6 (revised up after the Google Buzz fiasco, then down when they showed some wisdom)
  10. Apple: 5
  11. CARE International: 1 (They're not a PTC, so this is merely a non-evil reference point)
What's your ranking?

Update 12/15/09: I added Exxon thanks to a comment and because of the Philip Morris synergy. Exxon's astroturf climate change denialism (see also) campaign puts them in contention for the most evil publicly traded company of the modern era.

Update 1/6/10: Both Google and Facebook moved one notch up the evil scale. Google because of their arrogant, haphazard and uncaring Pages to Sites migration and Facebook because they sold their users out to their often crooked "Apps" vendors. Facebook is now more evil than Microsoft, and Google is tied with Apple.

Update 2/16/10: Google had dropped to '3' after unblocking China, but then leaps to '8' after the Google Buzz fiasco.
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2 comments:

  1. Curmudgeon12/13/09, 4:55 PM

    Considering only corporations that have a global impact:

    15 The Republican National Committee and all allied PACs and think tanks.
    15 News Corp and all other Murdoch properties.
    15 Blackwater/XE
    15 RIAA
    15 MPAA
    15 Monsanto
    15 Philip Morris
    15 Goldman Sachs
    15 Exxon
    15 Bechtel
    15 All entities involved with the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
    10 Microsoft
    8 Apple
    5 Google

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  2. JGF12/13/09, 5:02 PM

    I thought about the RNC, but decided I'd stick to Publicly Traded corporations. I'd give them a 13 myself, but I could be persuaded to move 'em up. Philip Morris is so evil I hate to put anything else in their province. I rank them a bit above the Mafia.

    Exxon is definitely a 13+ and News Corp is probably a 12+.

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