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The Android Administration: Google's Relationship With the Obama White House (theintercept.com)
theodp writes: The Intercept takes a look at Google's remarkably close relationship with the Obama White House, driving home its point with charts of When Google Visited the White House and how individuals have moved Back and Forth Between Google and Government. "Much of this collaboration could be considered public-minded," writes David Dayen. "It's hard to argue with the idea that the government should seek outside technical help when it requires it. And there's no evidence of a quid pro quo. But this arrangement doesn't have to result in outright corruption to be troubling. The obvious question that arises is: Can government do its job with respect to regulating Google in the public interest if it owes the company such a debt of gratitude?"
One interesting meeting The Intercept missed was a 2014 sit-down of Google and Microsoft execs with the head of the National Science Foundation and educators following a White House Hour of Code event, at which President Obama was 'taught to code' by Google-backed Code.org with Google-exec-turned-US-CTO Megan Smith looking on. Asked about the event in an interview, the President suggested the school system was to blame for his daughters not taking to coding the way he'd like. "I think they got started a little bit late," the President explained. "Part of what you want to do is introduce this with the ABCs and the colors." Less than a year later, the President sought to redress things with his Computer Science for All K-12 Initiative, citing Google-provided factoids ("Nine out of ten parents want it taught at their children's schools") to explain the need for the $4B budget request for the program.
One interesting meeting The Intercept missed was a 2014 sit-down of Google and Microsoft execs with the head of the National Science Foundation and educators following a White House Hour of Code event, at which President Obama was 'taught to code' by Google-backed Code.org with Google-exec-turned-US-CTO Megan Smith looking on. Asked about the event in an interview, the President suggested the school system was to blame for his daughters not taking to coding the way he'd like. "I think they got started a little bit late," the President explained. "Part of what you want to do is introduce this with the ABCs and the colors." Less than a year later, the President sought to redress things with his Computer Science for All K-12 Initiative, citing Google-provided factoids ("Nine out of ten parents want it taught at their children's schools") to explain the need for the $4B budget request for the program.
Government will never be completely free of corporate influence or corruption, so our expectations have to be realistic.
Keep the graft to the minimum necessary so that personal freedoms are not compromised. Accept that a government of the people will be flawed, like the people.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It is a vocation, like mechanics, or plumbing, or typing.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But this arrangement doesn't have to result in outright corruption to be troubling.
Yes, it does. Haters gotta hate, eh? But no, the rest of us do not.
I can't speak for Intercept, but it's typical theodp.
If there's no proof of corruption, that's proof of a cover-up. Plus the shadows are wrong and steel doesn't melt.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why is a relationship between Google and the White House anywhere near as bad as one between our lawmakers and Boeing, Lockheed, tobacco companies, cable companies, or firearms companies? I trust Google way more than those other guys, and for the White House to actively sway anything in favour of Goog would make waves.
theory and ideal (and propaganda) about usa government are very different from actual reality. historically as well as now.
its good to have ideals and aspire to them , but nobody should be shocked that ideals are not real and usa government is in effect more or less controlled by wealthy. in fact even in federalist papers, this is foreseen, and a solution (which is not an ideal) is proposed.
how to prevent government from being captured by wealthy? create opportunity to have lots of wealthy people, with conflicting interests, prevent the wealthy from solidifying into a permanent aristocracy and elite through generations, and allow for maximum income, social, and class, mobility, so that there is very high turnover in the people who constitute the wealthy.
this seems to have worked so far , but may not work in future.
economic mobility still happens, but in a very restricted sense.
truly poor no longer become billionaires, as once happened, only children of educated upper middle class seems to get to the top. you start your company in your parents ample garage . you no longer start in streets in poorer part of town.
and educated elite in upper middle class seems to be solidifying in to a broad aristocracy with its own ideology, reinforced with high cost of education. without networking and education at elite schools, one cannot get the best paying jobs and have access to capital.
so the real story is not capture of government by google in particular to benefit google, and harm other companies and masses.
real story is capture of government by an elite with its own ideology, and interests, and wants them satisfied vs rest of population . people who work at google, apple, various banks , and other successful companies, tend to think and act alike.
Google has been highly influential in at least one area -- patents. The head of the USPTO and various high level patent judges are from Google. Google doesn't like software patents, and by some coincidence, software patents are being rejected right and left. So I think that they are getting their money's worth.
I'm going to be something bad here: I'm going to mention Gamergate. Setting aside the vitriol and the conspiracy theories, Gamergate was about the complicated relationship between journalists and the people who they report on. There was a game developer who befriended some journalists and eventually started to date one and who, independent of that, got some favorable press for her game. The question raised was: just how independent of that relationship was the press that she received? The individual who she dated stayed away from writing anything about her himself, but even if we give maximum credit to the integrity of his coworkers, a friendship, even a casual friendship, will influence a person's perspective on the subject and people who they write about.
::sigh:: No, of course not.
Journalistic integrity on this matter is blurry. A journalist is expected to maintain relationships with sources, but to somehow keep those relationships from perverting their perspective.
So... this was my thought immediately upon reading the summary here. We want industry representatives to stay out of Washington, but we need our legislators to act from an informed position. There needs to be some kind of relationship there, but exactly what that should look like is blurry. We've recently had a very public and very nasty "debate" over something very similar (though much less influential) and that's what immediately sprung to mind when I read this. Is there any chance that the debate here will be more civil?
Seems like a rancidly dumb suggestion to me. Hurry up, January.
economic mobility still happens, but in a very restricted sense. truly poor no longer become billionaires, as once happened, only children of educated upper middle class seems to get to the top. you start your company in your parents ample garage . you no longer start in streets in poorer part of town.
Interestingly, in attempting to discount this statement, I got a mixed review.
Warren Buffett, son of a Congressman
Sam Walton, son of a poor farmer
Carlos Slim, son of poor Middle eastern immigrants whose father died when he was 13
Larry Ellison, son of an unwed NY Jewish mother who was given to his aunt/uncle when his pneumonia proved too much for mom
Mark Zuckerberg, son of a dentist and psychiatrist
Bill Gates, prominent lawyer father and board member mother
Amancio Ortega Gaona, son of a railway worker went to work as a teenager
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
come on guys, they do not have a close relationship, they are at least a mile away from the white house. on the otherhand, there is microsoft who is a mere quarter mile away.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I think you've got the math backwards. Google has enough power right now, between browser control, Chrome push updates, certificate blocking, "malware blocking", Android telemetry, Android Web Service control, google.com, Google Ad Words, and 3rd party tracking, and the multiple-million server networks behind everything, to tip the election.
Anyone dumb enough to bring an Android device into a non-secure area could be spied on by their Google phone if Alphabet, Inc. really wanted to, which of course leads to the ability to pressure or even outright extort if it came down to it. And if you don't think self-important hipster solutionists obsessed with changing the world "for the greater good" might see the ends as justifying the means, you might not be familiar with what people at Uber did a while back, and also suggested as an operation:
The news follows another incident this week in which a senior executive at Uber made a grovelling apology after suggesting putting a team together to dig up dirt on journalists who criticise his company.
Emil Michael, who made the remarks at a private dinner in Manhattan, said he had dreamed up an eight-man team who would find out about writers' personal lives and families so that Uber could discredit them.
Combined with Facebook employees thinking in any way, shape, or form, that "preventing Candidate XYZ from winning" is ethical, there's far more to fear from the Cloud than from DC at this point, and this is coming from a libertarian-ish, small (federal) government, Tea Party-ish, neo-federalist conservative.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
i am referring to usa .
all the americans you refer were well off with regard to family that they grew up in .
as i said "only children of educated upper middle class seems to get to the top. you start your company in your parents ample garage ". parents as in family one grows up in and pays for ones education.
to add to my reply since you include Sam Walton , my point was , as i already spelled out, precisely that there are no longer billionaires who grew up poor like Sam Walton, who is from an earlier generation than other americans