Mr. Schmidt Goes To Washington: A Look Inside Google's Lobbying Behemoth

barlevg (2111272) writes "In May 2012, in the midst of an FTC investigation into Google's search practices, the law school at George Mason University in Northern Virginia hosted a conference attended by congressmen, regulators and staffers. The topic: competition, search and social media. What none of the attendees of the conference knew was that Google was pulling many of the strings behind the event, even going so far as to suggest invited speakers. This event, as documented in The Washington Post is just a snapshot of the operations of one of the largest and highest spending lobbying entities in DC, a far cry from the one-man shop it started out as nine years ago, from a company "disdainful" of Washington's "pay-to-play" culture."

Comments

Re:google has no choice, like many others before t

[guises]

nor is Cato right wing

What, seriously? It was founded by Charles Koch, it was originally called "The Charles Koch Foundation." The Koch brothers still own it (mostly, it's a partnership) and fund it. They've been one of the primary sources of climate change denying rhetoric, their president used to be a board member of the Ayn Rand institute... how much further right can you get? They're not religiously affiliated, but they are definitely, unquestionably, right-wing.

I can't watch the Youtube video, I'm on dial-up... ::sigh:: However, I can read the title and I know what Night Trap is, and I know that it has nothing to do with Gmail. My issue with your Gmail example is that Figueroa did not "want to ban it." She wanted to pass legislation that would prohibit Google from collecting marketing data by going through their customers' email. Cato turned that into "democratic senator attempting to prohibit innovative new business strategy" (I paraphrase) but at no point did Figueroa try to prevent Google from offering an email service, only from violating peoples' privacy.