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..."

Comments

Re:This hasn't anything to do with Christmas

[__aaclcg7560]

Sure, Ebenezer could have bought a Christmas goose for Tiny Tim's family, but that would have just helped one family one time.

The contracting agency I worked for gave everyone an extra five weeks of pay (which is less than a month of pay after taxes) as a Christmas bonus. The author for an essay on Hanukkah goose wrote that it cost him $250 for kosher goose. With my unexpected holiday bonus, I could have bought kosher goose for a dozen families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/opinion/goose-a-hanukkah-tradition.html

But if he had instead kept the money, and reinvested it in his business, he could expand and create jobs, goods, and services that would benefit far more people, and benefit them permanently.

Or bought a yacht. Which is what the CEO of a Fortune 500 company was rumored to have done after getting a 60% raise for having lousy fiscal year and laying off 10% of the workforce. As one of the laid off employees, I had a lousy Christmas in 2013.

The prosperity of the modern world wasn't created by people giving away their money.

That's funny. Every how-to book on becoming wealthy recommends starting a charitable foundation.

According to the most recent statistics, the number of family foundations like the Cordes Foundation has exploded since 2001. There are now over 40,000 family foundations in the United States, making grants totaling more than $21.3 billion a year, up from about 3,200 family foundations doling out $6.8 billion in 2001, according to the Foundation Center in Washington.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/your-money/family-foundations-let-affluent-leave-a-legacy.html

Blaming the wrong thing

[Solandri]

"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,"

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.