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."

Comments

They'll be lonely

[republican gourd]

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.

You joke, but....

[clark625]

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.

Re:You joke, but....

[generic-man]

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.)