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Did Google.org Steal the Christmas Spirit? (theregister.co.uk)
Google.org gives nonprofits roughly $100 million each year. But now the Register argues that festive giving "has become a 'Googlicious' sales push." Among other things, The Register criticizes the $30 million in grant funding that Google.org gave this Christmas "to nonprofits to bring phones, tablets, hardware and training to communities that can benefit from them most," some of which utilized the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose (which tacks a fee of at least $30 fee onto every donation). "The most critical learning resources that teachers need are often exercise books, pen and paper, but incentives built into the process steer educators to request and receive Google hardware, rather than humble classroom staples," claims the Register. theodp writes:
[O]ne can't help but wonder if Google.org's decision to award $18,130 to teachers at Timberland Charter Academy for Chromebooks to help make students "become 'Google'licious" while leaving another humbler $399 request from a teacher at the same school for basic school supplies -- pencils, paper, erasers, etc. -- unfunded is more aligned with Google's interests than the Christmas spirit. Google, The Register reminds readers, lowered its 2015 tax bill by $3.6 billion using the old Dutch Sandwich loophole trick, according to new regulatory filings in the Netherlands.
The article even criticizes the "Santa's Village" site at Google.org, which includes games like Code Boogie, plus a game about airport security at the North Pole. Their complaint is its "Season of Giving" game, which invites children to print out and color ornaments that represent charities -- including DonorsChoose.org. The article ends by quoting Slashdot reader theodp ("who documents the influence of Big Tech in education") as saying "Nothing says Christmas fun more than making ornaments to celebrate Google's pet causes..."
The article even criticizes the "Santa's Village" site at Google.org, which includes games like Code Boogie, plus a game about airport security at the North Pole. Their complaint is its "Season of Giving" game, which invites children to print out and color ornaments that represent charities -- including DonorsChoose.org. The article ends by quoting Slashdot reader theodp ("who documents the influence of Big Tech in education") as saying "Nothing says Christmas fun more than making ornaments to celebrate Google's pet causes..."
Charity for fun and profit.
it's just how these sorts of things work. Corporations give to charity for three reasons: Tax write offs, Marketing/Publicity and to advance their long term agendas. This is why we shouldn't rely on charity to maintain the public good.
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These aren't charities... Just corporate tax breaks that helps expand the Google brand.
Just another reason to block all google domains on my home network.
Next you'll be outraged that Microsoft donates windows and office licenses and support to RNC and DNC conventions. How selfish of them to donate their own products!
If you read the article, it points out that a lot of the charity money buys Google. Getting tax breaks to get people to buy your stuff is good business for somebody...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Thats just stupid.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders.
You've got garlic in your soul, Alphabet.
I wouldn't touch you with a
Thirty-nine and a half foot pole!
...
Merry Christmas everybody!
After all, they "give to charity" as long as the purchases are for Microsoft products or Microsoft backed companies...
Google is becoming more and more abusive.
That's kinda the point though - google aren't donating windows. They're donating money, getting a tax break on that money, and then requiring that that money is spent on google products.
Effectively, google are forcing the tax payer to buy a bunch of google products that schools don't need.
You miss the point. They are giving them expensive fancy computers and the like but not giving them paper and pencils that the school system should already be providing. By not giving paper and pencils and other essentials they directly impact the school systems ability to steal money from the general fund and spend it on perks for school board members or absurdly expensive sports programs. Lets paint Google as the wrong doer here and not look too closely at the actual problem.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The Christmas we knows today - with the garish fat man dressed in red and gaudy lights that waste gigawatt hours of energy for nothing every year - is a pure invention of the Coca Cola company, designed solely to sell Coca Cola products. Also, the contemporary Christmas "spirit", based on ultra-consumerism and overeating, that start at least a month before the actual fucking Christmas Eve, is nothing but a massive effort by companies to brainwash people into buying tons of shit without realizing they're being manipulated into consuming. When was the last time Christmas was a strictly christian celebration, with Christians going to church to pray for a whole day and night, while the Jews, Muslims and all the others went about their business as usual on December 24?
So no, Google didn't steal the Christmas spirit: they *are* the Christmas spirit. They're pushing their products, like everybody else
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Google, MS, Apple, etc: they make "donations" that benefit them. "Here are some MS products. Oh, how nice that your students grew up using MS products and will now be accustomed to those when they start spending their own money."
Solution: Do not give Google any of your money. Deny them all data about you that they profit from, and do not use their datamining services. Instead, donate your money directly to the cause of your own choice.
We need more corporate charity where corporations find ways to both help others and improve their business at the same time. This type of giving only makes it more likely the charity will continue and feed off itself. Good things happen when you can align corporate profits with societal benefit.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Google just replaced everything familiar with a bunch of foofy gnarly dinky shit that's difficult or impossible to comprehend. I'm even starting to lose track of which of their NONDESCRIPT CAREFULLY ANDROGYNOUS RACELESS FLATFACE TOON-THING critters are supposed to represent real people. When cartoon people become indistinguishable from cartoon mammals and cartoon bugs I think to myself, geez we should keep this shit away from infants.
I think Google/Alpha&Omegabet has been contacted by space aliens in advance of their arrival, who have instructed them to remove all specific cues of human kind from their sites. The aliens would have Google populate its doodles with critters that resemble the aliens but NO, the aliens themselves have forgotten what they look like because their version of Google had been contacted by another race whose Google had done the same thing, to them.
The other day I unpacked a chlorine injection pump that had a 32 page full color comic book that smelled like a +$30,000 art project where someone literally spent days, weeks to come up with illustrations that communicate hazards and instructions without a breath of English for fear of offending someone. I had to stare down the damned thing for an hour to figure out (mostly from experience NOT direct comprehension) what specific things were being communicated. In the end how much will it cost them to remain 'sub-literate'?
I found something that claims to be a Google Decoder Ring but every time I slip it on I disappear. Time to take up writing again.
Disclaimer: I was negatively triggered by Thomas The Train but (oddly) Teletubbies were fine. I think it's about the level of presumption involved.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Damn! sorry I hit Redundant instead of Insightful.
Posting to remove it.
Why should MS donating windows be better than Google offering their products?
Because one is MS and the other Google?
[...] or absurdly expensive sports programs.
When my parents moved from SIlicon Valley to retire in Sacramento in the mid-1990's, my father drove me around the area to see the sights. He pointed out every school that was building a brand new football field but couldn't find money to reduce classroom sizes or provide supplies. Seems like a colossal waste of resources.
It isn't charity when it is done to promote the interests of the giver.
If google makes chromebooks, it makes sense that they are donating chromebooks and not donating paper and pencils. Where are the paper and pencil makers stepping up to donate????
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Merry fucking Christmas to meeeeeeee!
Fuck the rest of you people.
Because directly donating the product doesn't get you a tax break. Donating cash, and then requiring that the funds buy your product gets you a tax break on money you never *really* donated.
Because directly donating the product doesn't get you a tax break. Donating cash, and then requiring that the funds buy your product gets you a tax break on money you never *really* donated.
Mod parent insightful. OS licenses are free and are exactly why education licenses can be given out rather cheaply to begin with.
A "donation" to purchase my own products is just money laundering.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
You're complaining about how an organization chooses to donate money to help people because they are not donating their money in the exact way that you want them to?
Get the stick out of your ass, donate your own money as you see fit and shut the hell up!
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
maybe its more about there philosophy that these devices replace those things kind of like a computer at work is a lot like a compact office and a laptop is like bringing the office with you. the tablet/s can be seen as a reusible pen n paper not to mention other uses. not to say there is not self interest but....
When you donate property, the deduction from taxable income is the fair market value of the item. That's why the charity gives you a receipt listing the value of the item. Most of the time, that makes sense. Our family donated a $10,000 car. We could have sold the car and donated the $10,000, which the charity would use to buy a car (perhaps our car). Why jump through hoops buying and selling when we can just give the charity what they need?
When Microsoft gives Windows to schools (allows schools to force students to use Windows), Microsoft deducts the "fair market value" of 10,000 copies of Windows.
You may recall the Clintons donated their used underwear and listed the value at $2 - $15 per pair. The reason they listed the value was because the Clintons were treating each pair of used underwear as a tax deduction of $2-$15. The Salvation Army says they're worth max $1/pair, so that's probably tax fraud.
Christmas is 100% about you buying and buying into things. Seems like Google has the best sort of Christmas spirit.
Still not explained. The OS licenses aren't free. Go try to take one from the shelf. Won't work.
yes it does, you can write off the products you donate. where do you get the idea you cant??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Some people will complain about anything
If you read the article, it points out that a lot of the charity money buys Google. Getting tax breaks to get people to buy your stuff is good business for somebody...
This is 100% right, but you aren't actually getting the scale of it. Since I don't fully know the economics of Google's giving I'll explain in terms of Microsoft.
Microsoft gives to charity, sometimes through the Gates foundation. Very often directly to educational groups. When they do this, what they give are either their own products or money which goes to buy their own products. Let's say that Windows costs $1000. They give a copy of Windows and tax deduct $1000. Now, their tax rate for the deduction will be around 30% (yes, I know that Microsoft doesn't normally pay 30%, however they don't deduct where they do their main payments, they do it where they get the maximum deduction). So basically they get back $300. However, the cost of that Windows install isn't actually $1000. In they old days it would be around $1, for them sending out a CD. Nowadays, it's around $0.01 for the marginal cost of the license management of one additional license on their side. So basically Microsoft gets $299.99 profit from a $1000 donation.
But hold on. If Microsoft didn't donate what would happen? Well, actually the school would buy from Apple. This would mean a class of students would come out trained in Apple products and many of them would demand those whey the came into the working environment. So actually, you probably have to count another $500 of marketing cost that Microsoft avoids. So, a Microsoft "donation" of $1000 actually ends up as a $800 benefit to Microsoft's bottom line.
I suspect that the people working for Google are not stupid and their economics are similar to Microsoft's, possibly better.
Because directly donating the product doesn't get you a tax break.
Since when? In most jurisdictions it does. You tax deduct at full commercial value.
Coming from a teacher in a school building a $600,000 upgrade to the football field this is true.
However in our case the money was donated. By people that wouldn't have donated that money to classrooms.
If he isn't getting paid under the table for his decades of relentless google-bashing, he's an idiot.
It really isn't worth reading anything he writes. Even when he has an interesting story or information to share, his biases make anything he says untrustworthy.
The U.S. is near the top in education spending per student among OECD countries (change Perspectives to "primary to non-tertiary" to eliminate college costs). Only Austria, Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg spend more. If a U.S. teacher doesn't have enough money for "humble classroom staples" like exercise books, and pen and paper, it is not Google's fault.
About 5 years ago I stumbled across a full internal accounting report of a local school district online. The biggest expense wasn't teacher salaries, classroom supplies, or building construction and maintenance. It was administrative salaries. Think about that. The administrators at the school - the people who sit in offices, push paper, and rarely interact with parents or kids - take a bigger chunk of the school's budget than the teachers.
I'm convinced the administrators massage the numbers to cover their tracks in the official budgets. You can see a side-effect of this in the published stats. According to ED, the salaries of teachers, student support, and instructional staff is $4271, $388, and $291 per student respectively - total $4950. The benefits these teachers resceive is $1596, $142, and $102 per student - $1840 total.
The student to teacher ratio has been about 16:1 since 2000. So according to these ED stats, the average teacher salary is $80,000/yr, and benefits just under $30k/yr. Yet ED lists the average teacher salary as just $56,383. These numbers don't match up, not by a long shot. My hunch is administrators have shifted some of their salaries into the teacher salary figures to hide just how big a slice of the pie they're taking.
I suspect what's going on is a scam of epic proportions. Every time the education budget is cut, instead of applying the cuts to the least important programs and staff like any good business, the administrators apply the cuts to the most essential items like exercise books, pen and paper. They tell the teachers there's not enough money in the budget, and the teachers go into a frenzy telling the public we're not spending enough on education. When the education budget is increased, the administrators spend a few dollars per student to restore the textbooks, pen and paper, and siphon off most of the increase for themselves. How else can you explain teachers not having money for exercise books, pen and paper, when we spend more on education per student than all but 4 other countries on Earth?
Anyhow, Google is donating money - giving it for free. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yeah it would've been great if the donation didn't have restrictions on how the money was to be used. But from the school's perspective, a donation with restrictions is still better than no donation at all.
The cost of donation is (almost) zero, because of the unit cost. MS make their profit off people and corporate/institutional bodies with money. Institutions without money are not a target market, so there is no opportunity cost in donating either.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I was specifically thinking of the over 1 million buck football stadium that my former high school built when I wrote this. Did want to be that specific because I figured that (as usual) I would be modded down and called a liar if I mentioned it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You have just codified the sentiments of all the Control Freaks, also known as SJW – Social Justice Warriors. If they can't control the gift and/or the giver, they hate it. (IMHO)
It's because companies are allowed to buy back their own stock. It sounds weird, but that used to be against the law. Something about manipulating their own stock prices. Well, after that little rule change CEOs started being paid in stock and most of their pay was made by cashing out that stock. This is why raising the stock prices is job # 1 for a CEO. The easiest way to do that is buy backs, and the easiest way to do that is to score some quick cash in the form of outsourcing and layoffs.
As a funny little aside it was the Regan administration who was responsible for that little rule change.
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That's a great explanation, except for one thing:
It is completely wrong.
The IRS long ago learned that the best way to deal with charitable donations is to allow only actual costs rather than retail price. Otherwise, you'd see people "selling" a $10 product for thousands of dollars, then donating it to a charity to get those thousands off their taxes.
So if Microsoft sells a copy of Windows for $1000, and donates it to a school, they are allowed to deduct ONLY that $5 that is actually development and maintenance costs. The rest of the profit they would have made is completely ignored by both parties.
I suggest you talk with a tax professional before you go around trying to explain how taxes work - it will save everyone time, and prevent the spread of false information like your post.
Google isn't offering welfare, it's not their job to keep the school 'alive'. They're offering a gift the school can't afford buy itself. It's not an altruistic gift, since the school has to spend time and money to integrate it into teaching/student activities. Plus, Google indirectly benefits from everyone using their technology.
This sounds awesome! A company that produces goods creates a charity that collects money to help the poor and a portion of the money collected goes to purchasing products from the company. The company does not lose any revenue while at the same time they appear to be charitable because those products got to the poor. The bottom line is solid profit. Have OTHER people donate the money to purchase your products while appearing that your company is charitable! Brilliant!
On the other hand, if said company decided to donate the products directly to the poor at no cost, they would have lower revenue and smaller if any profit even though they were just as charitable.
The Gates Foundation has been doing the same shit for years. Oh, an international movement to relax patents on life-saving drugs? How about a "charitable" "humanitarian" "donation" to desperate governments to make them forget about the whole idea?.
Many of their charity gifts and settlements were in the form of MS software, hardware, training, and support contracts
Twinstiq, game news
Now people are criticizing charities for not giving what the want them to give? Okay guys, if you want "pencils" that bad maybe sell a chrome book or two or simply don't accept the charity if it is soooo bad. If you can't get "pencils" for your school you have bigger problems than getting the wrong type of charity.
'nuff said.
Well done, many times summaries and the articles, as claimed by the submitter, are wildly different. Not always click-bait but distinctly not accurate. The closing paragraph clarified the attitude of the article, such that clicking on it would be a waste of time. We even have some comments that aren't only from the 'you must hate google' crowd.
But the maintenance costs still come from the schools budget.
The Reagan administration that has a majority democratic congress that wrote that law? Whoops. Sorry you believed the fake news.
Google gave contributions to people and entities that may align with their interests?
Fuck that! Either give and make sure it benefits you in no way whatsoever of keep your fucking money.
Fucking triggered fucking socialist scum. Left leaning fucktards that spend all their time demanding what other people should be forced to do for the poor while never giving a dime in charity and bitching that those that do give to charity should feel bad because it dose not align with your shitty, fucked up and useless views.
Author should shut the fuck up forever.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
So if Microsoft sells a copy of Windows for $1000, and donates it to a school, they are allowed to deduct ONLY that $5 that is actually development and maintenance costs. The rest of the profit they would have made is completely ignored by both parties.
Sure.. Except here, you are actually completely wrong yourself.
Because the "actual cost" to Microsoft License Sales Incorporated, which will be the corporate vessel chosen to make the donation, is the cost of the license they pay for, which they will buy from Microsoft Ireland Licensing at something close to the full cost.
I suggest you talk with a tax professional before you go around trying to explain how taxes work - it will save everyone time, and prevent the spread of false information like your post.
Whilst we're making suggestions here, I suggest you talk to a different tax specialist. You want one who knows about a thing called "transfer pricing". And no, such things aren't public knowledge because this is all hidden in the detail which the companies never have to publish.
s/cost/price ..which they will buy from Microsoft Ireland Licensing at something close to the full price...
the cost to Microsoft overall is still the $5 which the other AC suggested, however the price from Microsoft Ireland to Microsoft Licensing will be something like $950 of which $945 will be justified by the cost of "intellectual property".