You're right. Unfortunately, the current culture is "more, more, more", even when it's Comcast, which must be like squeezing blood from a stone at this point (what growth potential is there with an ISP of their size?)

If the board doesn't take action to raise profits, the shareholders will remove uncooperative executives and replace them with those who will. So it might not be de jure in their corporate charter, but that's the reality.

>> here is no default effective fiduciary duty to do anything related to profitability, be it "maximize" or otherwise

I'm not entirely sure that's 100% true. I know the one thing I've seen before when "duty" to shareholders comes up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

"Interests of shareholders" does not mean the same thing as "maximizing profits." For example, a forward-thinking Comcast executive could make the argument that the goodwill from not looking like creepy spying dudes hiding in your hedges outweighs the short-term increase in revenue.

That's exactly the same as maximizing profits.

That depends on where you're standing and what your timeframe is. Which, by itself, is enough to put the boot to the aforementioned pernicious lie: it's impossible to "maximize profit" for the shareholders, because the shareholders aren't unified in purpose.

That ruling only really prevents companies from directly giving the money away in defiance of the shareholders. It's about 'means' and 'ends'.

It can't meaningfully impose any particular strategy on a company. Think about it for a second: wouldn't profitability maximising oblige all companies to hurtle into whatever new line of business was deemed most profitable at that time - today we're an ISP, tomorrow we're real estate, next week we're hoarding gold?