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Google Goes to Washington

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the red-white-and-click-through dept.

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."

3 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Quite frankly by twiztidlojik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quite frankly, I'm surprised a company with that kind of revenue stream DIDN'T have a lobbyist in washington.

    --
    I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
  2. Not Making Microsoft's Mistake by donnacha · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One of the biggest mistakes Microsoft made was not realizing early enough that they needed to pump a substantial slice of their pie to DC. If they had had an astute lobbyist on the ground, making "campaign contributions" to both sides, there never would have been a government investigation, they wouldn't have lost momentum through having their attention diverted and their public image wouldn't have taken quite such a beating - who will ever forget the belligerent attitude of Gates' deposition, who could have failed to smile at the embarrassing memos that were trawled up?

    As a side note for non-US citizens: in America corruption has been legalized in the form of campaign contributions. To get elected, politicians must spend vast sums of money on TV advertising. The airwaves that get TV to the masses nominally belong to "the people" but are sold off to major corporations such as GE for a pittance. The corportations then create programming that desperately pursues a mass audience (i.e. quality is not enough, as in the case of Firefly, cancelled before even finishing it's 1st season). The corporations then sell that mass audience back to the politicians in the form of short adverts. The adverts are extremely expensive but the experience of the past half century has consistently shown that the frequency of adverts has a vital role in winning office.

    This is great for the corporations because, far more importantly than the revenue that they earn from this exploding advertising spend, it means that no politician has a realistic chance of getting into power unless he is getting lots of corporate campaign contributions (corporate contributions dwarf personal) and, therefore, no representative of the people will ever be able to truly work in the people's interests. Both of the main American parties are equally dependent on this system and, therefore, the only real differences that can exist between them are presentational.

    The problem with Microsoft was that they got big so quickly that they didn't have time to take the hint and assume their role in this particular circle of corruption. One of the first things they did when the Clinton administration turned on them was to hire the most expensive lobbyists they could find and start spraying contributions in all directions., guaranteeing that next adminstration, Republican or Democrat, would step down the legal attack.

    Google is making sure that they don't make the same mistake.

  3. Re:You used to be cool, Google. by Peet42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hold that thought...

    But remember, it's also possible that Google will lobby to have unworkable copyright/intellectual property laws revoked, break up the teleco's stranglehold over cheap bandwidth, prevent the movie industry from dictating what you do with the DVD player you just bought or a myriad of other things that the US Gov't currently votes on without being particularly well-informed on the subject.

    Me, I'll wait and see what happens before I start complaining. :)