Slashdot Mirror
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..."
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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'
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!
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
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>
[...] 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
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.
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.