Ethical Analysis of Google's New Privacy Policy

I. Ethics Section

A. Utilitarian Ethical Analysis of Google’s New Privacy Policy

* Defining and Explaining the Utilitarian theory

* Developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, developed to be a scientific system of ethics

* An action is considered morally acceptable if it produces the greatest amount of pleasure of any of the other available alternatives.

* Bentham believed in a hedonic calculus; a moralist should sum up the units of pleasure and the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the future, and could take the balance as a measure of the overall good or evil tendency of an action.

* Analyzing the Morality of Google’s New Privacy Policy

* Is it moral for Google to change its current privacy policies by combining them all?

* Stakeholders: Stockholders, Advertisers, Competition, Customers,

* Very Positive to Stockholders, Positive to Advertisers, Positive to Competition, Negative for Customers

* Moral conclusion pursuant to Utilitarian model:

* Altogether, Google’s new privacy policy creates more positive than negative.

* Moral action.

B. Kantian Ethical Analysis of Google’s New Privacy Policy

* Intro and Brief Explanation of Kantian Ethics

* Focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions in and of themselves, rather than on their consequences.

* Statement of Kant’s Ethics Principle – The Categorical Imperative

* Application of the Three Tests of the Categorical Imperative to topic (Universal “Law” Test; Kingdom of Ends Test; Agent-Receiver Test)

* Action must be able to pass a series of tests:

* Can Google’s privacy policy be made universal?

* No – followed by explanation

* Does Google’s changing of its privacy policy respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for their own purposes?

* No – followed by explanation

* Does the change stem...