Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. They'll be lonely by republican+gourd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A progressive company with fairly reasonable takes on copyright and employment that isn't going to be lobbying from a position of entitlement-because-we've-always-made-money-the-sa me-way? They'll be so lonely... Nobody will want to get drunk on the steps of the Capitol with them except the Kennedy's.

  2. You joke, but.... by clark625 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm in the Army currently, and my office computer has access to a bunch of Department of Defense internal networks that suposedly has all the data I could ever want. The problem is it's poorly indexed. So, if I need a particular obscure form or technical manual, it can be near impossible to find. What scares me is that I can often go to Google and find the data I want (or at least a link to a secure server with the data).

    google.gov may seem silly to those in the private sector... but if Google did index private government and military sites, and allowed access only to authorized individuals, I wouldn't complain. Heck, I'd be happy at my new efficiency.

    --
    Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
    1. Re:You joke, but.... by generic-man · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Couldn't the various agencies get Google Search Appliances and then enable searching across all their various networks?

      (Google would be done faster than the government anyway, even after Google's mandatory 6-year beta period.)

      --
      For more information, click here.
    2. Re:You joke, but.... by Stonehand · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Do Google's search algorithms make sense for an intranet in which you probably don't have quite the diversity of link counts? On the web, you have pages which have massive in-links and pages which have extremely few, but on an intranet, is that a reliably available and reasonable indicator of authority?

      --
      Only the dead have seen the end of war.
    3. Re:You joke, but.... by Kiaser+Wilhelm+II · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I dont know how the search appliances work differently than Google.com, but what I do know is that they work damned well at our company for indexing informration just like Google.com does for the whole net.

      If Google is marketing these appliances at various sized companies, then I would imagine they would have taken the time to make the algorithims appropriate for the target audience.

      --
      Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
      Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
  3. Google already has an EU lobbyist by FlorianMueller · · Score: 3, Interesting
    In the build-up to the European Parliament's second-reading vote, a Google lobbyist also became active in Brussels (the de-facto capital of the EU). Patricia Moll previously worked for Microsoft as Government Affairs Manager. If you search for her name on Google in connection with Microsoft's name, you can still find various articles and other references.

    Since Google had not been involved in the earlier stages of the debate on that European software patent directive, they didn't want to publicly state their position on that controversial issue. However, Patricia was in close contact with the FFII, a non-governmental organization that opposes software patents, as well as some companies that were at least somewhat critical of software patents.

    It seems that Google mostly lobbied for a far-reaching interoperability privilege. That's important to them so they can, for instance, perform certain operations on PDF files as part of their search services. Some people said that Google was also critical of the idea to legalize software patents in Europe, and that may have been the case, but none of the MEPs who I asked was able to confirm that Google took a critical position on software patents (I didn't ask that question to many politicians, so the fact that no one confirmed it may not mean much).