Google and Apple are great global brands, but each face challenges which could tarnish their reputations.
Two developments highlight their respective corporate responsibility challenges.
Google revealed earlier this month that it set aside $500 million during the first quarter of 2011 to potentially resolve a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the company's advertising practices. It's been widely reported that the investigation relates to ads that Google ran from online pharmacies whose practices may have violated U.S. laws.
The Wall Street Journal reports that pharmaceutical trade associations warned Google for years that it was accepting advertising from some unscrupulous and possibly illegal online drugstores.
And, an investigation of Google by the Food and Drug Administration even involved a sting operation. FDA investigators "contacted Google posing as representatives from rogue Internet pharmacies, according to people familiar with the matter," the Wall Street Journal story says.
The results of that federal sting and how it relates to the Justice Department investigation of Google have not been disclosed.
Meanwhile, three workers died last week after an explosion occurred at a Chengdu, China, factory which manufactures Apple's iPad 2.
The Foxconn plant, in a southwest China high-tech zone, has a troubled history, which Apple referenced in its Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report [pdf].
The plant is one of only several suppliers for the iPad 2, and conditions at the factory don't make for the kind of glorious images that the device is known for.
Apple acknowledges in the supplier responsibility report, in a section entitled "Responding to Suicides at Foxconn," that Foxconn has attached "large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides."
A team charged to investigate plant conditions noted that Foxconn has hired "a large number of psychological counselors" and is staffing a 24-hour care center at the facility to cope with some of the problems there, Apple says.
"Apple will continue to work with Foxconn through the implementation of these programs, and we plan to take key learnings from this engagement to other facilities in our supply base," Apple says.
In an era when reputation management, whether online or in supply-chain conduct, is the watchword, global companies Google and Apple face global brand challenges.