Google’s latest genAI shift is a reminder to IT leaders — never trust vendor policy

If they add a clause to every RFP that they will only work with model-makers that agree to not do X, Y, or Z, that will get a lot of attention. The contract would have to be realistic, though. It might say, for instance, “If the model-maker later chooses to accept payments for the above-described prohibited acts, they must reimburse all of the dollars we have already paid and must also give us 18 months notice so that we can replace the vendor with a company that will respect the terms of our contracts.”

From the perspective of Google, along with Microsoft, OpenAI, IBM, AWS and others, the idea is to take enterprise dollars on top of government contracts. If they were to believe that’s suddenly an either/or scenario, they might suddenly reconsider. 

Given that Google has decided that revenue is more important than morality, the answer is not to appeal to their morality. If money is all they care about, speak that language.