Slashdot Mirror


Google Goes to Washington

DIY News writes "Google has hired a lobbyist in Washington D.C. to influence the nation's laws governing the Internet, telecommunications and copyrights. Google sees a presence in Washington as a necessity as government becomes more involved in the Net's development. Among its efforts, the government has worked to shield private U.S. companies from demands by the United Nations and other countries for multilateral control of the Net."

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'm confused...... by Lucractius · · Score: 5, Informative

    lets add it up.

    Google Goes To Washington
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/08/133223 &tid=217&tid=103
    well it might be nice for someone to be doing no evil there for a change so ... thumbs up

    Google Launches Google Reader at Web 2.0
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/195225 4&tid=217&tid=1
    Cool new google app ... Thumbs Up

    Google Maps Graduates
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/142025 8&tid=217
    SOmething comes out og Beta Testing... Thumbs Up

    Google Declares War on Microsoft
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/06/125021 5&tid=217&tid=109
    War on Microsoft, THUMBS UP

    Taiwan Irked at Google's Version of Earth
    http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/ 04/1655204&tid=217&tid=219
    Pissing off chinese... Thumbs Down

    Google & Sun Planning Web Office
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/04/123422 9&tid=102&tid=217
    Hype but none the less a pretty big deal going down with sun... Shrug

    Google Office Still in the Wings?
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/03/105 7258&tid=185&tid=217&tid=218
    Awesome Idea (even though it didnt happen) ... Thumbs Up

    Google-NASA Partnership Backlash
    http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/ 02/0023257&tid=217&tid=219
    Possibly not doing no evil... Thumbs down

    Google Ant
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/0 1/1714241&tid=217&tid=14
    mmmm Taxonomical Fun... Thumbs Up

    Google Plans to Offer Free WiFi in San Francisco
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/131620 5&tid=217&tid=193
    Free Wifi.. Thumbs Up

    Google's Patents Reveal Strategy To Beat Microsoft
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/083123 4&tid=217&tid=187&tid=109
    Kicking MS... Thumbs up.

    Well it seems based on the statistics... We still like google this week... stay tuned next week folks :D

    --
    XML - A clever joke would be here if /. didn't mangle tag brackets.
  2. Opening an office != Hiring a lobbyist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article title is misleading. Google has had lobbyists on tap in Washington for quite awhile. Google is is also a member of trade groups (e.g. - NetCoalition) which do a substantial amount of lobbying on behalf of the search/tech/ad/etc industries. They're opening an actual government relations office now - a big step up from hiring a few lobbyists who split their time with other clients.

    Senate lobbying disclosures here.
    House lobbying disclosures here.

  3. Google Blog Link and Content by lababidi · · Score: 5, Informative
    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-goes -to-washington.html
    Google goes to Washington

    10/06/2005 07:09:00 AM
    Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel

    It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C. affect Google and our users more every day. It's important to be involved - to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we've opened up a shop there. The first member of our Washington team is Alan Davidson, a veteran thinker and advocate for issues we care about.

    Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation. OK, that sounds a little high and mighty, so let me break it down into something a bit wonkier with a sampling of the U.S. policy issues we're working on:

    Net neutrality. As voice, video, and data rapidly converge, Congress is rewriting U.S. telecommunications laws and deregulating broadband connectivity, which is largely a good thing. But in a country where most citizens have only one or two viable broadband options, there are real dangers for the Internet: Should network operators be able to block their customers from reaching competing websites and services (such as Internet voice calls and video-on-demand)? Should they be able to speed up their own sites and services, while degrading those offered by competitors? Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out? Or, if that's not blunt enough for you, what's better: [a] Centralized control by network operators, or [b] free user choice on the decentralized, open, and astoundingly successful end-to-end Internet? (Hint: It's not [a].)

    Copyrights and fair use. Google believes in protecting copyrights while maintaining strong, viable fair use rights in this new digital age. We support efforts by the U.S. Copyright Office to facilitate the use of orphan works (works whose rights-holders can't be found), while fully respecting the interests of creators. We applauded the Supreme Court's carefully calibrated decision in the Grokster case, but worked to defeat legislation that would have created new forms of liability for neutral technologies and services like Google.

    Intermediary liability. As a search engine, Google crawls the Internet, gathering information everywhere we can find it. We're a neutral tool that allows users to find information posted by others - like a continuously updated table of contents for the Internet. Not surprisingly, we don't believe the Internet works well if intermediaries and ISPs are held liable for things created by others but made searchable through us. That's why Google will continue to oppose efforts to force us to block or limit lawful speech; instead, we focus on providing users the information, tools, and features (such as SafeSearch) they need to protect themselves online.

    This is just a taste. We're also engaged in policy debates over privacy and spyware, trademark dilution, patent law reform, voice-over-Internet-protocol (VOIP) regulation, and more. The Internet policy world is fluid, so our priorities will surely morph over time. And, of course, Google is a global company. In a future post, we'll introduce you to some of the policy issues we're confronting outside the U.S.

  4. Re:Google Goes to Washington by nicodaemos · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... remember the Evil Empire brought you Home PC's Free Internet browsers, Human Friendly Operating systems etc ...

    Well, actually

    a) IBM created the home PC market
    b) NCSA Mosaic and Netscape first provided free browsers
    c) Apple created the first Human Friendly OS

    The only part MS played in these were

    a) Good marketing and creative legal contract negotiating
    b) Copying the competition and using their OS monopoly to push their own product
    c) Copying the competition and using their App - OS relationship to aggressively kill off the competition ... yeah they don't stick to Standards, but again they mostly do the standard and more as most of the little tricks that MS put in are then adopted by Open Source Developers ...

    You need to expand your mind more and read things other than what Microsoft's propaganda machine puts out. This is just not true. ... don't get me wrong, I don't support MS i have just been the the business long enough to remember what it was like before Windows.

    For someone who "remembers", you seem to have little knowledge of the facts.

    Microsoft is not considered the Evil Empire for making money ... it's the simple fact that innovation to them, means using creative marketing and legal tactics to conquer a market. The engineering of the product (what the customer most cares about) is inconsequential and not pursued. This ensures they get to maintain their 80% margins in their monopoly businesses. Create buggy OS, shove it down user's throats, repeat for next version.

    I just don't get why some people allow themselves to be repeatedly victimized by a crappy vendor and instead of calling them on it, actually choose to defend them.

  5. ./ robot by MHleads · · Score: 2, Informative

    Has ./ set a robot to post each blog entry of Google's official blog on Slashdot, albeit with a delay of 48 hrs?

    Here I give tomorrow's ./ headline - "Google launches Feed Reader"! No kiddin', visit reader.google.com

  6. Re:Not Making Microsoft's Mistake by donnacha · · Score: 2, Informative
    Half century? Kennedy is widely acknowledged as the first 'television president' and the debates iwth Nixon were certainly not prohibitively expensive.

    The Nixon/Kennedy debate was programming i.e. an actual show that individual viewers chose to watch. True, Kennedy's television performance received the credit for his victory but, at that time, the scale of advertising's influence was beneath the radar of most commentators - they simply prefered to believe that their fellow countrymen had made an informed decision based on debate rather than mere advertising. The advertising industry itself has historically sought to downplay it's influence: see cigarettes, childrens toys, junk food. I have no idea what the level of media spend was during that election but you can be confident that, even by 1960, the military-industrial complex was suffiently in control to sway elections, I refer you to Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 speech on the matter as he prepared to hand over power to President elect Kennedy.

    It is worth noting, too, that, in the English language, the phrase "the experience of the past half century" means that one is considering that span as a whole. You will also commonly find that people use half century units in a rather general way, not meaning to suggest that a general trend popped into existence at precisely 2:11PM on the 9th of October 1955.