Christianity Today has the story. In short, faith-based groups must now pay for search giant's tools. It's sad because if Google wants to do good, as it claims, it has just cut itself off from one of the best ways of doing so. Chuck Colson explains how short-sighted and unwise it is if Google wants to make a positive contribution to the world.
[...] Presumably, Google made its office tools available to nonprofits at a discount because nonprofits provide beneficial services to society — and visibly supporting charity is good public relations and good business. But is Google now saying that those societal benefits count for less than the easily offended sensibilities of a small minority of its potential customers?
Remember, churches and religious organizations provide an incredible amount of needed services to their communities — and flourishing communities make for better business environments. The University of Pennsylvania’s Ram Cnaan estimates that the average urban congregation provides over $476,000 worth of social services to its community every year. This includes nearly $95,000 of volunteer hours worked; $79,000 dollars in economic benefits for drugs and alcohol treatment; $22,500 worth of divorce prevention, plus other economic stimulus for crime prevention, and so on. Ironically as well much of it goes to helping people with AIDS.
And in almost every case, such church aid is not contingent on the recipient’s beliefs. . .