Slashdot Mirror
Google Sought To Hide Political Dealmaking
A blog entry by Michael Kanellos at ZDNet links to and expands upon an article in the Charlotte Observer. Last year Google was apparently throwing its weight around in North Carolina, seeking tax breaks from state and local legislators. When the company didn't get what it wanted pressure was brought to bear on legislative aides, journalists, and politicians. The search giant was especially touchy about keeping the negotiations secret: "Executives didn't want anybody even to mention the company's name for fear that competitors could learn of its plans. Most involved with the negotiations were required to sign nondisclosure agreements ... That posed challenges for elected officials, charged with conducting the public's business in the open. As the tax measure wended its way through the legislature, some lawmakers began linking it to Google." The results of this deal are extremely lucrative for both sides. Google brought some $600 million in investment and as many as 200 jobs to the state, and legislation enacted with Google's help is projected to save the company some $89 million in taxes over 30 years.
Can we just all agree that Google is about as evil as the average corporation now? Or do some of you still believe that Google really is above the rest morally?
Philosophy.
Results 0 - 0 for search "backhander"
Did you mean to search for "Tax evasion"?
liqbase
The blog accuses Google of "[trying] to browbeat lawmakers".
But the article simply states that Google, in negotiating with NC and six other states, asked for confidentiality.
Ultimately, Google chose NC. Presumably, NC offered the best tax breaks to support 200 new jobs.
The blogger even says "Tax breaks actually are not that unusual."
So where is the evil?
Just had to try it, 6.03M results for both links.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Which reminds me, you didn't explain whether it was your Google hit count or your conclusion that was a joke.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
I'm on a .fi network
.com 6.17 6.21 6.21 .co.uk 6.28 6.21 6.21 .fi 6.28 6.21 6.21 .no 6.19 6.21 6.29
hl=en hl=fi hl=no
So it looks like it doesn't depend only on the TLD you use, but also the hl parameter.
But not in a particularly logical manner.
Slashcode's broken my Plain Old Text table, that's 3 columns for the three languages 4 rows for the 4 TLDs
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
"The results of this deal are extremely lucrative for both sides. Google brought some $600 million in investment and as many as 200 jobs to the state, and legislation enacted with Google's help is projected to save the company some $89 million in taxes over 30 years."
Lets see, NC gets $600 Million investment that could have gone elsewhere, 200 odd new jobs (and tax revenue from employee's) that also could have gone elsewhere and it just cost them $89 million tax revenue over 30 years, tax revenue that they would probably not have got if they had not done the deal.
Sounds like NC got the better end of the deal by a long margin
The secrecy and nondisclosure agreements are pretty standard, for reasons that are obvious if you give it two minutes worth of consideration
Do no evil!!!! Unless you're in china or in politics, cuz then you're just trying to fit in. Right? Right?
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
This is just standard buisness practice. States compete to attract large companies with jobs and those large companies do their best to cut good deals for them.
There is nothing even slightly unethical about this. One might argue that such a system is undesierable as it gives large companies an advantage over small companies, and their is some truth to that, but on the other hand large companies may have requirements that aren't easily dealt with in non-negotiated ways.
So I certainly see an argument for the federal government outlawing states from making deals with companies to attract them (some sorts of tax breaks are already forbidden) google certainaly didn't do anything immoral by using the same system that everyone else does. I mean that's like arguing your a bad person for taking advantage of Bush's tax breaks just because you voted against them.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
The problem with open-source search engines is that it's not really an open-source venture, but a hardware venture.
You are gathering information, which needs storage, and you need huge amounts of bandwidth and processing power. The actual algorithm is rather unimportant in that context.
So while it might be interesting to see corporations and universities team up to create a search engine, it is questionable if the costs are worth it.
What would you say is the advantage of an open search engine, other than having a competitor to Google (and there's still Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com for that)?
"Writing apps to rank and sort web pages strikes me as the type of problem that a lot of smart people would find a lot of fun."
Your at least a decade too late, the ship has sailed and it's called google.
"Yeah, the shine's definitely gone off Google, eh? at the rate google (and yahoo) are swallowing up other sites there's going to be some major monopolising going on."
Playing one state of against another is just the regular kind of "evil" found in all big-bussiness, big-bussiness don't pay tax bills like ordinary folk, they negotiate thier tax bill (global corporatization on a smaller scale). Google are paying tax and staying in the US. The politicians did thier job by attracting a large corporate to thier turf and getting gauranteed revenue for 30yrs plus all the spin-off effects on the economy, what more do you want?
Attacking google for this behaviour is like kicking the cat after a bad day, if you want to attack "evil" there are plenty of targets, corporations that lay the planet to waste and supply waring tribes with modern weapons. They destroy lives and feed from the public trough rather than create meaningfull employment and a nice pot of tax money. OTOH: "Kick the cat" often enough and it will scratch your eyes out while your sleeping.
Evil is as evil does - Gump.
The state where I live (not part of the US) built a power plant specifically for an Aluminium smelter, gaurenteed cheap dirty (and drit cheap) electricity for 30yrs or so. They also built a massive sewer to take the waste from a large paper mill and dump it in the ocean and called it a "green project" to rehabilitate the river the mill had already killed. The mill threatened to move overseas/interstate if it had to spend money and went so far as to infiltrate "enemy" community groups in order to discredit them. The crap these places spew and the fairy tale propoganda they use to justify it, is IMHO "evil", but try telling that to anyone who's livelyhood depends on it. Try telling the guy at the nuclear missle plant or the biological warfare lab that his work is "evil" and he will claim he is "preseving freedom" or some such rationalization, to him the thought of not planning for nuclear war is "evil".
I get kind of sick of the "we caught google being evil" shit that accompanies so many articles, it's not like they are claiming they have God on their side or that anyone else is "evil". Here in Australia we have some odd expressions, the one that fits google on slashdot is Tall poppy syndrome.
Disclaimer: "you" - not picking on "you" personally, just the general sociopathic pendantry that surround google's brilliantly provocative slogan.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
When you make any sort of investment, like buying insurance or a retirement plan, you don't ask how evil the corporations are. All you want is the biggest return for the lowest price, which means the portfolios that will make your investment will be composed of stock from the companies with biggest profit.
Thank you for many of you to point out, that "this is just stndard business practice."
Evil starts with "standard business practice", doesn't it?
Governments, financed by public money, should be transparent and accountable to the public at all cost, without a very few exception.
Corporate interest would not be one of those exceptions.
In fact, any "standard business practice", which is trying to deform this basic political principal should be refused, reported to criminal investigation.
Attempting to corrupt the political system should trigger the ultimate capital punishment for corporate violators.
As a resident of "Carlotte", North Carolina my entire 25 years on this Earth, I gotta let you in on a secret; we named it Charlotte. What is this "Carlotte" you speak of? ;p
Aw Frell this
Sadly, this is pretty normal these days, and I don't blame Google for doing it. They have to look out for their share holders, and that involves saving money when reasonable. I only partially blame the state, since if NC didn't do this, another state would and the jobs would go that way too, making NC a worse place for their residents. But the sad thing is that small businesses are just now getting their tax bills for the year from their counties (yes, for the privilege of having a file cabinet in my office, I owe the county more money). And the tax breaks that the big businesses get are basically discrimination against smaller businesses and anti-competitive.
We are raising barriers of entry into every large industry we create. I don't think that it's up to the states to fix this, but the federal level should pass a law banning these anti-competitive practices. No city, county, or state should have the right to change taxes on one group in such a way that it discourages competition. We should implement this similar to anti-discrimination laws that we already have to minimize the impact on the local governments right to raise money.
They should change it to: "don't get caught being evil"
What Google did here was to say that they did not want their competition to find out the deal. Once they do, they will want it as good or better. In fact, it is in the state's best interest to not tell either. That way, they can encourage somebody like yahoo to come in, but with less incentives. The evil comes in when you use your weight against them. For example, if Google was to say to NC that if you do not give us a good deal, we will rate other states above yours (or even to imply it). That is how MS (and to a degree yahoo) has operated. That is what evil is. But a simple negotiation is not evil.
As to operating in a backroom approach, well, that goes on ALL the time. Nearly every company does that with states when they are seeking to come to the state. In fact, I would not be surprised if NC approached Google first, and they kept it quiet. Now, if the deal is kept quiet after the fact, or is not released prior to the congressional vote, that becomes an issue. But the article does not say (or even imply) that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The beauty of open source for corporations is that someone else spends much or even all of the capital for development. Instead of IBM having to outlay the capital to develop linux in order to sell services, they can simply provide services. Companies like RedHat invests in linux development as a loss leader so that they can sell assorted linux services while maintaining a competitively advantageous position in the market. But the point is that someone, somewhere is paying for development.
A lot of companies do this. Look at some of the recently opened car plants (as oposed to the closed ones). They all negotiated sweetheart deals with the state and local governments.
The real scandal here is that they can do this at all. Why should corporations be allowed to negotiate taxes? Can individuals do that? "Hello, state! I am thinking of moving to your state and being productively employed! And some of the money I make will be spent in the local economy! Promise! I will do so if you cut me some slack on property taxes and state income taxes!"
You'd get laughed at. Scale? so what, could 200 independent single individuals do the same? Nope. But a corporation can.
The same with those land seizures. XYZ corp wants to put in an import*mart or golf course, the local government seizes some poor guys land, forces him to move or close his business, so the bigger corp can put their crap there. Nuts. Does the opposite ever happen? "Hiya state! I want you to seize this local golf course/stripmall/sports stadium for me. I will bulldoze out all the lamer energy hog neon sign enhanced buildings and ugly crap in the way, and then plow it up at my expense with my tractor and make free community gardens, saving local consumers millions a year with the grocery bill". Go ahead, try to do something like that, see what happens.
It is not "getting to the point", it is well past the point that governments exist to cater to large corporations for the most part. "Hiya largest government! I have a problem" You see, I have been in the entertainment redistribution business for generations. It was costly to do this, every copy cost a lot of money to reproduce and distribute, but we did it and made a lot of profit. Unfortunately recent technological advances have made this sort of business almost completely obsolete, which threatens our bottom line. It is now technically possible to do what we did in the past 100 to 1000 times cheaper, and get the product to the consumer. But we are so used to making so much net profit a "unit" for our products that we can't allow this dangerous replicator technology out there without severe restrictions on the consumers, else we would lose our traditional profit structure, and we certainly couldn't charge the 2 cents a unit that would be possible now..it's UnAmerican! So please pass laws that force our business model to stay in place in perpetuity. Oh, and we need to extend the limits on this "IP" stuff as well, after all, even with the tech restrictions, we want todo this forever! We'll get back to you once that time limit approaches again, and we'll extend it even further! Thanks! Oh ya, here's some completely unrelated huge bags of cash, just an amazing coincidence that we are handing this to you, really, no strings attached!"