Human Rights on Google's Proxy

Google shareholders will vote on two proposals, one on free speech and one that calls for the establishment of a board committee on human rights, according to proxy statement filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both proposals are to be submitted at the annual shareholder meeting scheduled for May 8.

The free-speech proposal is similar to one Google shareholders rejected a year ago that would have prohibited Google from proactively censoring itself. The measure is being submitted by the St. Scholastica Monastery and the Office of the Comptroller of New York City, which serves as the custodian of public employee pension and retirement funds.

The second proposal to establish a board committee on human rights that would review and make recommendations regarding human rights issues raised by the company's activities and policies. That proposal comes from Harrington Investments, which manages assets for institutional and individual investors and specializes in socially responsible investing.

Google's board is recommending that shareholders reject both of the measures.

The proxy statement also includes other one-of-a-kind policies. Google's board adopted a policy in October that specifies the company will only enter into transactions with family members when the transaction is in the best interests of the company. Last year Google invested more than $4 million in 23andMe, a company targeting Web-based genetics tools that was started by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. That financing was reviewed and approved by Google's audit committee.

The board also approved spending $1.1 million--$7,000 per hour--to charter a corporate jet for executives to fly in last year.

Also permitted were Google's sponsorship of the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30-million international competition to land a robot on the moon; $1 million in financing for Comsenz, a provider of social-networking software and hosted services for Web sites in China; and the $20.3 million acquisition last year of PeakStream, developer of a software application platform for multiprocessor systems.