I think Google's lobbying overall is the result of being punished early on by regulatory capture of competitors. Look at the threats:
* Microsoft funded number backroom whisper campaigns in DC (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-an-anti-google-whisper-c...)
* Microsoft and Oracle funded their own Astroturf lobbying groups and think tanks, to tie up the company in lawsuits and investigations (e.g. FairSearch)
* Oracle funding numerous shills like Florian Mueller
* Carriers and Cable Companies lobbying to demolish net-neutrality
* Bills like SOPA.
Google used to spend very little on lobbying, and as a result Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, Comcast, had the undivided attention of Congress.
Now to be fair, Microsoft was attacked by its competitors with similar campaigns in the 80s and 90s. It just goes to show you that corporate lobbying can play off people's populist tendencies and weaponize them against competitors.
So when you ask, "How could Google give to ALEC", a question Googlers themselves ask, or contribute to conservatives who deny client science, you have to consider that Congress has the industry by the balls. They can threaten regulation or punishment, and then hold fundraisers on pledges to block said regulation. It's a shakedown: "nice business you have there, shame if I'd have to regulate it. By the way, I'm having a fundraising dinner next week" Why would Silicon Valley serve on Trump's advisory councils when many of the members revile Trump on a personal level? Because there's a huge risk making the executive branch an enemy.
Its the market at work - at some point the marginal advantage of investing even a little in lobbying results in more X, (where X can be anything from power to profit).
And in a competitive scenario, SOMEONE will do it.
Not to mention Even a unhappy incumbent can initiate a lobbying strategy.
People in the comments seem to focus a lot on google itself, but this is the way the game is played.
Its just that tech is realizing that they can't create utopia because the laws of complex systems still apply.
“Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings,” Mr. Lynn said. “People are so afraid of Google now.”
Honestly, the only thing shocking about any of this is that people thought Google was "special". The reality is, when its revenues are threatened, it's going to reach like any other corporation, which it should.
Google has its tentacles into almost everything, and you should be concerned/cautious about lock in, abuse and market competition challenges that go with it.
I personally find it a challenge every day to avoid using Google Services. I use Bing instead of Google, but I'm locked into Gmail (which is a great product), Google Drive (A great product), Google Maps (a great product), etc.
Are you actually locked into those services? I decided to switch away from Google when they mixed up my inbox with someone else's and started sending my email to someone who quickly used the mistake to issue password resets on many of my accounts, and it was easier than I thought.
With Gmail, I just forward my mail to my Outlook.com account, and I switched my email address on as many sites as I could to use my Outlook.com email address. Works just fine.
Office Online with OneDrive is a fantastic product. Sure it costs money, but if you're not paying for a product, you're not "locked in". Download your docs in Office format and save them to OneDrive, done.
I actually switched to Bing Maps a long time prior to this because Google Maps has such poor performance on every computer I use it on. Google Maps has the far superior place search, but Bing Maps works better as an actual map in my experience.
The only Google service I use regularly is Google Translate, because there really is no comparison.
If you are considering no longer using Google or one of their products: they offer an easy way to export your (signed in) data for archival, or even wholesale delete your account and take all your data with you: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190
Not trying to encourage anyone one way or the other, but a good FYI to keep in mind.
I've actually found FastMail wholly superior to Gmail, HERE Maps refreshingly good at working without a data connection, which is a lifesaver while traveling, and I use Sandstorm.io over Drive, which is capable of a lot more as well.
I started with an attempt to leave Google products for political/moral reasons and ended up finding superior products on the way.
I like most Google products but I think that Gmail is the wost email client that was ever created. The default way in which it groups emails is terrible:
1. They have three tabs for emails, so to check if I have any new emails, I literally have to click through 3 different tabs.
2. When I have long email threads, new emails get lost under the clutter instead of showing up at the top of my inbox like a rational human being would expect.
3. When I actually click to open an email thread; 99% of the stuff is collapsed and I keep having to expand it out which is really annoying.
With a lot of modern web-based email clients, I always feel like the company is trying to hide my own emails from me which is creepy - That's why I like the simplest layout possible. New emails should always appear at the top and highlighted as unread.
When Marissa Mayer came to Yahoo, she changed the Yahoo email web client so that it would group emails in the Google way. I lost faith in humanity that day. I almost quit the service but thankfully at least they had a setting which allowed me to revert back to the correct way.
Maybe Gmail has a setting to display emails correctly (like Yahoo) but I haven't heard about it.
People like to talk about the great employee environment, open source contributions, and philanthropic work of Google, but what projects will get cut when Google finally has a bad quarter? Is Google at it's core actually different - or is it more of the same, merely enjoying a circumstantial utopia period for its first two decades?
The Intercept reviewed the full termination email sent from Slaughter to Lynn that was cited and quoted in the Times report and found that they were reported and characterized with complete accuracy. The full text does, however, show that Slaughter threatened to make Lynn’s firing more difficult for him and his team should it generate any negative publicity for New America.
> “We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to “just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.”
That was a real kicker for me. This seems like pretty blatant corporate censorship. Unfortunately, it's hard to make the public care about a situation like this that's so out of view.
It needn't be corporate censorship to have the exact same outcome. If Google is upset with an article, or thinks it's not fairly representing all sides, they are going to contact the organization and say so. They don't have to threaten removing funding, the indication that they were unhappy could have been impetus enough for Slaughter to act proactively. Even if Google was thinking of removing funding, there's nothing wrong with that either (they have the right to fund or not fund what they want). The problem is if Google dictated Slaughter's actions, which we don't know for sure, but she says they didn't (but she would say that anyway, as saying otherwise would imperil her position and the organization as a whole).
Truthfully, I'm not so sure that this isn't being played up and portrayed a specific way by the media. I was going to say the problem was that the New America Foundation had accepted too much funding from one source, but since Google has only funded them to the tune of about 21 million since 1999, unless the vast majority of that has come in recent years, that funding probably accounts for fairly little of their operating costs on a year to year basis, since they employ more than 200 people. Even if Google had given all 21 million in the last yea alone, that would basically fund all the employees at $100k salaries and pay for building costs. I suspect quite a few salaries are much higher, and there's a lot more costs than that, so I'm not sure Google's funding really amounted to a huge amount when spread over many years.
First, she says his work is imperiling their funding (referring to Google's complaint about its positions not being represented). Then, she says his work has nothing to do with his firing.
The EU has no chance, as does any country in the world. Google will simply buy one nation at a time just by offering services to people through governments, which will turn into more exposure (votes) for the politician in power who makes the deal. That politician will of course never bite the hand who feeds him/her.
"Thanks to our last deal with Google, now we have fresh water and comfy chairs in every public transportation bus, and the ticket price was cut half!".
"Thanks to Google Books, now all kids whose family income is under X will receive a free ebook reader and free school books".
The reality is that thinktank as corporate patronage is a trend that extended long before Google -- it's a problem we have to face where money can buy ideas. It just so happens that it's Google or Facebook who has the overwhelming share of money as opposed to Exxon.
I don't find this very shocking or offensive. Pragmatic people don't bite the hand that feeds them. That means that every think tank will have at least one blind spot in the form of its major donor. This is also true of many media outlets. Bloomberg News is very careful when it reports about Michael Bloomberg. The same could be said of many other publications' relationship to their owners. If you don't like the people paying the bills, it's time to start hitting up their rivals for funds...
I don't find corruption (to a certain degree) shocking, but it is offensive and should be minimized and we should find ways to reduce it over time. Murder isn't shocking - it happens all the time - but absolutely should be minimized.
Do you think it's not a story, that the NY Times shouldn't have published it?
Google might want to look at the history of Standard Oil and the old US wide singular Bell Telephone. If you get so big that you can abuse your power, you will probably start to do so (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely ...). They tend to get broken up into less powerful pieces. How you break up Google, I don't know. They are an ad tech company with the best search engine and a bunch of money loosing ancillary activities.
If I had to take a quick pass: Search/Gmail/Drive, Android/Play, and Chrome. The largest monopolizing power Google has is it's control of platforms, which can drive it's services. Between setting up defaults to their own products and including tight integrations nobody else can match, this is Google's biggest advantage today. Chrome and Android also actually each have ways they could independently be monetized, Chrome via search placement auction like Firefox, Android via licensing from OEMs.
Gmail and Drive and such predominantly need to be ad-funded to survive, I suspect, and I think allowing an online services company to run ads is fundamentally okay. The monopolizing power of losing Chrome and Android would over time relegate them to losing monopoly status by default.
> Google might want to look at the history of Standard Oil and the old US wide singular Bell Telephone.
Those companies made their owners very, very wealthy, and the companies' decedents remain extremely wealthy and powerful. The CEO of one of the decedents, Exxon, is now the U.S. Secretary of State, for example.
Google may think that's a very acceptable downside risk.
The thing is that Google has absolutely gone down questionable path from their early days.
It is a little unfair to think this problem exists only within Google. Time and time again we are reminded why corporations will evolve to become as greedy and as protective of their turf expansive of their power and monopolistic as they can get, even if good people are running them. It is the system itself that does this, corporations evolve to survive and to thrive. That in of itself isn't a bad thing but you need checks and balances. Things like the Supreme Court saying that Corporations are people or all the money pouring into our political process those are things that have to change.
Even the best of them will eventually become the worst of them. Google is now evil for sure, no doubt about that, but there have been and there will be many others.
I have read so many baseless hostility toward Google, especially in France at a time where governments were fighting Google over taxes and newspapers realized they had lost income from advertisements for good, that I now distrust any newspaper article painting the firm in a bad light.
This isn't a problem with Google, it's a problem with the establishment left in the United States.
There's no genuine, credible anti-corporate voice in American politics. The reasons why are many, but of course they typically distill down to the incredible power of money to influence people, of which this is an example.
The side-effects of there being no credible labor party in our political system manifests, in part, in the extreme volatility we see in electoral politics.
There's one anti-corporate idea that I've always thought was interesting but AFAIK isn't discussed by anyone: small-corporation libertarianism. In general libertarians are too concerned with government but almost all of them (plus neoliberals and many financially conservative folks) can agree that competition is at least one of their most important economic tenants. Competition is balanced against economies of scale etc. but those are totally level after you're making millions of a product.
It's just weird that there aren't at least some voices arguing strongly that super-large companies (not even conglomerates) like google or apple should be split up for economic growth.
"There's no genuine, credible anti-corporate voice in American politics."
I note that you said "corporate" vs "capital(ism)". Thank you for making the distinction.
Most liberals I hang with favor a Sander-esque version of capitalism meets socialism. Balancing capitalism (ready access to capital), competition, open markets with a strong safety net and democracy. Balancing rewarding achievement and merit with ensuring fairness, not abandoning people.
What does that look like?
I think it looks like more democracy. Every where.
--
I've used democratic decision making in the workplace. It's very effective. Think of it as better governance meets social cognition.
Although probably not original, I just kinda made it up, mostly modeled after the USA's Constitution (balance of power) and Demming/Ford quality circles (empowerment, joint decision making).
Since, I've been keenly interested in any effort swimming in the same direction. Co-ops, worker owned companies, the political philosophy of the Occupy Movement, whatever I can find.
I recently read this book. It's good survey of our current pickle (winner takes all economy, chaotic boom/bust cycles) with an okay primer on worker self directed enterprises (WSDE). The "more democracy" prescription is the closest I've found to my experiences. But being rhetoric vs a howto, it lacks actionable steps.
Why is this not equally a problem with the establishment right in the United States? They aren't being a genuine, credible anti-corporate voice either. Or do they get off the hook because we just assume that there's no chance they would ever be that?
In your estimation, are you placing the very active and loud anti-corporate voices in this country outside of American politics, or merely denying that they are genuine?
Corporations have moved left in part because they realize that they've won already with the Right. The Right hates government so much they will never vote for anyone with more government control. I sometimes think thats why corporations have moved more left on social issues, so you can have the NeoLiberal globalists overshadowing the workers-rights left.
Well, yeah. There's no substantial anti-corporate voting bloc.
Most substantial voting blocs are pro- something. Pro-union, pro-environmental, and pro-privacy voters may support positions which some corporations oppose, but the voters themselves aren't by-and-large anti-corporation; as long as corporations behave they don't have any problem with them.
Personally, I'm glad Google is behaving this way: it is tiring to tell people over and over again that one should not put absolute trust into any company and be met with bewilderment and references to the "Don't be evil" motto ( the one that they finally got rid of).
Google is like a reasonable run utility. MS with Office became something like that and did the job too well with XP. Legacy media companies today hate Google, FB or even Craigslist taking away their messaging for dollars relevance. We have been consolidating wood behind legacy family arrows for decades. Google serves global markets efficiently. Here is Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller explaining pump-dump wagon circling local American economic problems. Younger people forget how NYC and SF attracted educated talent pools when they were relatively CHEAP. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/real-estate-pri...
The only evidence given that the firing was due to pressure from Google is Lynn's statement (which seems to just be his assumption, because he's a critic of Google). There are at least two official statements that it was in fact not Google's pressure.
I don't think Google is an any more moral actor than any other corporation, but why would they do something like this, which has basically nothing but downside to them? Despite Lynn's fantasies, I doubt that Google is particularly worried about his voice of criticism, nor stupid enough to think this would silence him.
Shouldn't the "disgruntled employee dismissed for cause" theory, which has at least as much evidence as the "lonely voice of criticism silenced by corporate behemoth", be at least entertained?
[+] [-] cromwellian|8 years ago|reply
* Microsoft funded number backroom whisper campaigns in DC (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-an-anti-google-whisper-c...) * Microsoft and Oracle funded their own Astroturf lobbying groups and think tanks, to tie up the company in lawsuits and investigations (e.g. FairSearch) * Oracle funding numerous shills like Florian Mueller * Carriers and Cable Companies lobbying to demolish net-neutrality * Bills like SOPA.
Google used to spend very little on lobbying, and as a result Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, Comcast, had the undivided attention of Congress.
Now to be fair, Microsoft was attacked by its competitors with similar campaigns in the 80s and 90s. It just goes to show you that corporate lobbying can play off people's populist tendencies and weaponize them against competitors.
So when you ask, "How could Google give to ALEC", a question Googlers themselves ask, or contribute to conservatives who deny client science, you have to consider that Congress has the industry by the balls. They can threaten regulation or punishment, and then hold fundraisers on pledges to block said regulation. It's a shakedown: "nice business you have there, shame if I'd have to regulate it. By the way, I'm having a fundraising dinner next week" Why would Silicon Valley serve on Trump's advisory councils when many of the members revile Trump on a personal level? Because there's a huge risk making the executive branch an enemy.
[+] [-] intended|8 years ago|reply
Its the market at work - at some point the marginal advantage of investing even a little in lobbying results in more X, (where X can be anything from power to profit).
And in a competitive scenario, SOMEONE will do it.
Not to mention Even a unhappy incumbent can initiate a lobbying strategy.
People in the comments seem to focus a lot on google itself, but this is the way the game is played.
Its just that tech is realizing that they can't create utopia because the laws of complex systems still apply.
[+] [-] redm|8 years ago|reply
“Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings,” Mr. Lynn said. “People are so afraid of Google now.”
Honestly, the only thing shocking about any of this is that people thought Google was "special". The reality is, when its revenues are threatened, it's going to reach like any other corporation, which it should.
Google has its tentacles into almost everything, and you should be concerned/cautious about lock in, abuse and market competition challenges that go with it.
I personally find it a challenge every day to avoid using Google Services. I use Bing instead of Google, but I'm locked into Gmail (which is a great product), Google Drive (A great product), Google Maps (a great product), etc.
[+] [-] freehunter|8 years ago|reply
With Gmail, I just forward my mail to my Outlook.com account, and I switched my email address on as many sites as I could to use my Outlook.com email address. Works just fine.
Office Online with OneDrive is a fantastic product. Sure it costs money, but if you're not paying for a product, you're not "locked in". Download your docs in Office format and save them to OneDrive, done.
I actually switched to Bing Maps a long time prior to this because Google Maps has such poor performance on every computer I use it on. Google Maps has the far superior place search, but Bing Maps works better as an actual map in my experience.
The only Google service I use regularly is Google Translate, because there really is no comparison.
[+] [-] seccess|8 years ago|reply
Not trying to encourage anyone one way or the other, but a good FYI to keep in mind.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|8 years ago|reply
I started with an attempt to leave Google products for political/moral reasons and ended up finding superior products on the way.
[+] [-] jondubois|8 years ago|reply
1. They have three tabs for emails, so to check if I have any new emails, I literally have to click through 3 different tabs.
2. When I have long email threads, new emails get lost under the clutter instead of showing up at the top of my inbox like a rational human being would expect.
3. When I actually click to open an email thread; 99% of the stuff is collapsed and I keep having to expand it out which is really annoying.
With a lot of modern web-based email clients, I always feel like the company is trying to hide my own emails from me which is creepy - That's why I like the simplest layout possible. New emails should always appear at the top and highlighted as unread.
When Marissa Mayer came to Yahoo, she changed the Yahoo email web client so that it would group emails in the Google way. I lost faith in humanity that day. I almost quit the service but thankfully at least they had a setting which allowed me to revert back to the correct way.
Maybe Gmail has a setting to display emails correctly (like Yahoo) but I haven't heard about it.
[+] [-] bagacrap|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben_jones|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nether|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phonon|8 years ago|reply
The Intercept reviewed the full termination email sent from Slaughter to Lynn that was cited and quoted in the Times report and found that they were reported and characterized with complete accuracy. The full text does, however, show that Slaughter threatened to make Lynn’s firing more difficult for him and his team should it generate any negative publicity for New America.
[+] [-] ebola1717|8 years ago|reply
That was a real kicker for me. This seems like pretty blatant corporate censorship. Unfortunately, it's hard to make the public care about a situation like this that's so out of view.
[+] [-] kbenson|8 years ago|reply
Truthfully, I'm not so sure that this isn't being played up and portrayed a specific way by the media. I was going to say the problem was that the New America Foundation had accepted too much funding from one source, but since Google has only funded them to the tune of about 21 million since 1999, unless the vast majority of that has come in recent years, that funding probably accounts for fairly little of their operating costs on a year to year basis, since they employ more than 200 people. Even if Google had given all 21 million in the last yea alone, that would basically fund all the employees at $100k salaries and pay for building costs. I suspect quite a few salaries are much higher, and there's a lot more costs than that, so I'm not sure Google's funding really amounted to a huge amount when spread over many years.
[+] [-] gthtjtkt|8 years ago|reply
First, she says his work is imperiling their funding (referring to Google's complaint about its positions not being represented). Then, she says his work has nothing to do with his firing.
[+] [-] zentiggr|8 years ago|reply
Do no evil indeed.
[+] [-] cjcole|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squarefoot|8 years ago|reply
"Thanks to our last deal with Google, now we have fresh water and comfy chairs in every public transportation bus, and the ticket price was cut half!".
"Thanks to Google Books, now all kids whose family income is under X will receive a free ebook reader and free school books".
...etc.
[+] [-] appleflaxen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EternalData|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polishTar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masonic|8 years ago|reply
https://www.newamerica.org/open-markets/press-releases/open-...
[+] [-] vonnik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forapurpose|8 years ago|reply
Do you think it's not a story, that the NY Times shouldn't have published it?
[+] [-] Tistel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|8 years ago|reply
Gmail and Drive and such predominantly need to be ad-funded to survive, I suspect, and I think allowing an online services company to run ads is fundamentally okay. The monopolizing power of losing Chrome and Android would over time relegate them to losing monopoly status by default.
[+] [-] forapurpose|8 years ago|reply
Those companies made their owners very, very wealthy, and the companies' decedents remain extremely wealthy and powerful. The CEO of one of the decedents, Exxon, is now the U.S. Secretary of State, for example.
Google may think that's a very acceptable downside risk.
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarkmoody|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickben|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fowlerpower|8 years ago|reply
It is a little unfair to think this problem exists only within Google. Time and time again we are reminded why corporations will evolve to become as greedy and as protective of their turf expansive of their power and monopolistic as they can get, even if good people are running them. It is the system itself that does this, corporations evolve to survive and to thrive. That in of itself isn't a bad thing but you need checks and balances. Things like the Supreme Court saying that Corporations are people or all the money pouring into our political process those are things that have to change.
Even the best of them will eventually become the worst of them. Google is now evil for sure, no doubt about that, but there have been and there will be many others.
[+] [-] ktta|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rixed|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|8 years ago|reply
There's no genuine, credible anti-corporate voice in American politics. The reasons why are many, but of course they typically distill down to the incredible power of money to influence people, of which this is an example.
The side-effects of there being no credible labor party in our political system manifests, in part, in the extreme volatility we see in electoral politics.
[+] [-] hwillis|8 years ago|reply
It's just weird that there aren't at least some voices arguing strongly that super-large companies (not even conglomerates) like google or apple should be split up for economic growth.
[+] [-] specialist|8 years ago|reply
I note that you said "corporate" vs "capital(ism)". Thank you for making the distinction.
Most liberals I hang with favor a Sander-esque version of capitalism meets socialism. Balancing capitalism (ready access to capital), competition, open markets with a strong safety net and democracy. Balancing rewarding achievement and merit with ensuring fairness, not abandoning people.
What does that look like?
I think it looks like more democracy. Every where.
--
I've used democratic decision making in the workplace. It's very effective. Think of it as better governance meets social cognition.
Although probably not original, I just kinda made it up, mostly modeled after the USA's Constitution (balance of power) and Demming/Ford quality circles (empowerment, joint decision making).
Since, I've been keenly interested in any effort swimming in the same direction. Co-ops, worker owned companies, the political philosophy of the Occupy Movement, whatever I can find.
I recently read this book. It's good survey of our current pickle (winner takes all economy, chaotic boom/bust cycles) with an okay primer on worker self directed enterprises (WSDE). The "more democracy" prescription is the closest I've found to my experiences. But being rhetoric vs a howto, it lacks actionable steps.
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/...
http://www.democracyatwork.info
[+] [-] munificent|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublinben|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taurath|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saalweachter|8 years ago|reply
Most substantial voting blocs are pro- something. Pro-union, pro-environmental, and pro-privacy voters may support positions which some corporations oppose, but the voters themselves aren't by-and-large anti-corporation; as long as corporations behave they don't have any problem with them.
[+] [-] idlewords|8 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/slaughteram/status/902874942433263616
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] notyourday|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SquareWheel|8 years ago|reply
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
[+] [-] Chiba-City|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajarmst|8 years ago|reply
I don't think Google is an any more moral actor than any other corporation, but why would they do something like this, which has basically nothing but downside to them? Despite Lynn's fantasies, I doubt that Google is particularly worried about his voice of criticism, nor stupid enough to think this would silence him.
Shouldn't the "disgruntled employee dismissed for cause" theory, which has at least as much evidence as the "lonely voice of criticism silenced by corporate behemoth", be at least entertained?
[+] [-] howscrewedami|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mondoshawan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|8 years ago|reply