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Why Google Should Be Afraid of a Missouri Republican's Google Probe (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Republican attorney general of Missouri has launched an investigation into Google's business practices. Josh Hawley wants to know how Google handles user data. And he plans to look into whether Google is using its dominance in the search business to harm companies in other markets where Google competes. It's another sign of growing pressure Google is facing from the political right. Grassroots conservatives increasingly see Google as falling on the wrong side of the culture wars. So far that hasn't had a big impact in Washington policymaking. But with Hawley planning to run for the U.S. Senate next year, we could see more Republican hostility toward Google -- and perhaps other big technology companies -- in the coming years. The Hawley investigation will dig into whether Google violated Missouri's consumer-protection and antitrust laws. Specifically, Hawley will investigate: "Google's collection, use, and disclosure of information about Google users and their online activities," "Google's alleged misappropriation of online content from the websites of its competitors," and "Google's alleged manipulation of search results to preference websites owned by Google and to demote websites that compete with Google." States like Missouri have their own antitrust laws and the power to investigate company business conduct independently of the feds. So Hawley seems to be taking yet another look at those same issues to see if Google's conduct runs afoul of Missouri law.
We don't know if Hawley will get the Republican nomination or win his challenge to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) next year, but people like him will surely be elected to the Senate in the coming decade. Hawley's decision to go after Google suggests that he sees some upside in being seen as an antagonist to a company that conservatives increasingly view with suspicion. More than that, it suggests that Hawley believes it's worth the risk of alienating the GOP's pro-business wing, which takes a dim view of strict antitrust enforcement even if it targets a company with close ties to Democrats.
We don't know if Hawley will get the Republican nomination or win his challenge to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) next year, but people like him will surely be elected to the Senate in the coming decade. Hawley's decision to go after Google suggests that he sees some upside in being seen as an antagonist to a company that conservatives increasingly view with suspicion. More than that, it suggests that Hawley believes it's worth the risk of alienating the GOP's pro-business wing, which takes a dim view of strict antitrust enforcement even if it targets a company with close ties to Democrats.
When your company founders are openly supporting the political opposition party, your company partnered with the old government, and your company has demonstrated your willingness to censure political thought of the user base when they go against your chosen politics, then you shouldn't be surprised that your company becomes targeted by the opposition party when your party is out of power. You made your bed, now sleep in it.
I'm gonna guess the Republicans are prepping to find replacements for all those wealthy donors who are threatening to abandon them if they don't get their tax breaks. Just threaten some corporations until they drop some free speech dollars into the right Super-PACs.
Seriously though, what is the googs doing that would make them seem like suspicious to conservatives?
They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm guessing that Google would do well to quickly take this out of state jurisdiction (if something threatens to be filed), to forestall mushrooming multiple state investigations if one succeeds, and claim that if anything should be tried at a federal level it's internet competition. And then so swamp the opposition with studies and facts about how they simply reflect the bidding of their advertisers and express no opinion or facilitate no anticompetitive behavior themselves.
But just guessing, I'm no lawyer.
Does Google have a nexus in Missouri? If not, what legal issue can proceed? If Google were incorporated in Antarctica, could anyone sue them? Just asking for the sake of legal jurisdiction.
Looking back, does anyone (!) want to go back to Altavista searches? Or Inktomi? Or that other search engine that got big bucks from mesothemioma and bulk email ads per click? I must have cost them a lot from my clicks :)
A dingo ate my sig...
More money, more time, more experience and more patience. Google only needs to wait for another AG to come along who drops the case for the right campaign contribution.
Forget donating to the Democrats, just throw some money at primary challengers.
Remember how the Republicans were kind of forced to accept Trump?
Now imagine that, times 500 congressional races.
I think the Republicans might want to cut bait against an opponent like Google.
So, basically, reducing regulations only matter when it affects large Republican donors?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I didn't look closely, but my understanding was that Damore was quite liberal, just apparently not the kosher type liberal.
They don't have a problem with Google's business practices, their privacy intrusion, their anti-trust violations. The problem is that they do all these things while not supporting the GOP.
Maybe if Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google were to molest some children they'd be more comfortable with him.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are not google's customer. You are the product. There is no monopoly on search, there is almost no barrier to creating a new search engine and there is nothing sticky about me using Bing, Google or DuckDuckGo. Google is completely up front about what they do with the data people freely give them.
Google is how ever a monopolist in advertising. If I want to buy advertising on the internet I go to Google. They make it easy, they give me amazing tools and they can sell me placement everywhere. No other advertiser on the non-facebook internet is even relevant. On the flip side if you want to sell advertising space on your website, unless you want to have a real sales team, you have no choice but to sell to Google. The barrier to entry in online advertising is massive. Search, email, maps, documents, etc., those are just added lines of defense to protect adwords.
Yes, well I would have thought being probed by Missouri republicans wouldnt be nice, those good ol' boys are always the sick ones.
Which are the right wingers on this list? https://www.opensecrets.org/se...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
It's not just "grassroots conservatives" that are worried about this. Re: the Demore memo, but also the fact Google was contributing to the Clinton campaign, and of course the "american scientist" search results. I'll grand that search result could be an organic result... but the fact we've had multiple engineers stating it's common practice to feed the engine specific data to "help" it find the right data does make me pretty suspicious. You can't deny most people use Google services, so if what they see come up on those services is manipulated for political gain, directly or indirectly, that's a pretty scary thing - especially when you consider there seems to be a large push for a non-meritocratic/anti-technocratic culture within the current ranks of Google employees.
James Woods is about the only conservative actor and he even admitted it hurt his career.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
against big, profitable companies, the Republicans will start to get treated like Obama got treated after he started criticizing the banks for the 2008 market crash.
Reminder: If your a person who thinks "Companies should stay out of politics" and are not actively supporting folks like Bernie Sanders (Or one of the right wing equivilents who are against corporate donations to parties, assuming such a uniicorn exists) who are directly campaigning for banning corpoorate donations and lobbying, you are a hypocrite.
No ifs , no buts, hypocrite.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Not sure who the target here is with that much political talk, but remember that Socialist Europe does the same thing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All of them, by any reasonable political compass.
Eat the rich.
Arnie is probably one of the most liberal republicans in the public eye.
Eat the rich.
Ahh, the classic liberal "he makes us look bad so we'll claim he's a conservative". Seriously, at some point you guys just need to learn to accept that there are assholes on your side too. Look at the Republicans current controversy. Are they claiming he's not really a republican? No. They're telling him to resign.
Now it's all political and how anyone not fully left of center is evil.
I'm sorry, I must have missed it for all the right-wing FYGM shit that I have to wade through to read any actually intelligent comments.
Eat the rich.
No. They have an ever widening ring of censorship that is targeting conservative voices on Youtube. Additionally, it is now known that they have a toxic leftist monoculture that is hostile to conservative workers in their work force that became apparent with the firing of James Damore. Who dared ot ask reasonable questions but felt the full rage of the toxic left because it impinged on their every widening ideology of identity politics that is essentially cult-like now.
Gary Sinese and Kelsey Grammar too
Funny how the people who distrust big business the most are the ones screaming about somebody wanting to shine the spotlight on Google.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Schwarzenegger is not conservative by any decent definition. Willis isn't really political at all. Reagan is dead.
Damore said, if you read with some clarity and intelligence, that the patriarchy has, at a fundamental level, influenced and controlled the structure of jobs in the tech sector. His position is that because of male domination in that industry the parts of the job that are not related to the actual work of being a software engineer are more easily tolerated by those with Y chromosomes.
Long hours, little time off, working weekends, high stress, and recognition based on being noisy and self promoting are all artifacts of a overtly male occupied industry, which is now permeated by decades of entrenched male-oriented business structures. His tentative proposal was to rearrange these parts of the business to better accommodate individuals that do not thrive in that environment.
I think it was in Google's best interests to tar and feather him. The changes he points to would severely alter the corporate business structure and cost Google an incredible amount of money. Working anyone, not just women, 6-7 days a week for 12 hour days (or more!) would become verboten. Promoting people would require taking a deeper look at each eligible candidate, rather than quickly sifting through the handful of shameless self promoters who constantly squak for promotion. Reducing stress would require redundancy in more positions and necessitate additional employees.
He is right though. If the tech industry were to change these antiquated ideas of what it takes to make it big at Google, more women would find working there attractive. Lowering standards wouldn't be necessary to increase female participation in their workforce. The drawbacks of the industry that have the best and brightest women choosing other fields would no longer be a barrier. I also think that more men would want to work there too, but as there has been no shortage of men who are willing to sacrifice their entire lives to the company for 70 hours a week plus, this is irrelevant. If the objective is to attract a more diverse pool of qualified candidates, and to keep the ones you already have happy, these changes would certainly do it.
So yeah, Google dodged a bullet there. Damore's changes would certainly accomplish the goal of attracting more diverse qualified candidates. Unfortunately, Google is too attached to a patriarchal system that preys on the "bread-winner" drive of males for profitability and market dominance. If exploiting their employees wasn't such a big part of their successful business model they could easily change their business structures to make their company more attractive to women.
Google also got really lucky that there are so many "feminists" that took the "he's a sexist" bait and ran with it. If they had bothered to actually think about what he said, rather than using it as an opportunity to rant and scold, his points could have spurred a debate that may have ultimately become an important turning point in the all too silent war that has been simmering between workers and corporate America. Alas, useful idiots are available by the millions and they are always looking for an opportunity to be offended in a loud and public voice. The end result is that Google gets to maintain their antiquated, male-centric, patriarchal business structure and at the same time receive the support of women everywhere.
What a damn shame.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Not by US standards. People need to get off of this soapbox. And sure, both sides take individual policies to the opposite spectrum. And yes, we all know that most all American politics is on the right. But, you can't apply the global left/right to the politics of the US...it's not relevant to the discussion because when Americans talk about left/right, it's only relative to the U.S. range of positions, and the Ds are left of the Rs. You'd have to come up with another phrase ridiculous phrase to distinguish the ultra right from the central right to the leftist right.
Just another day in Paradise
How's Tim Allen doing these days?
Just another day in Paradise
I see this as a political strategy.
1. Comment on how Business X is screwing the little guy, and state that legislation is needed.
2. Open the door to the lobbyists
3. Profit.
You don't need to actually go through with #1. The threat along brings it home.
Just another day in Paradise
Yes. Even by U.S. standards.
People need to take off their partisan blinders:
No Republican has done as much to hurt the poor as Bill Clinton did when he gutted welfare.
No Republican has put more blacks and Latinos in jail than Clinton's draconian crime bills in the 90's.
No Republican has tried to outright cut Social Security benefits like Obama tried to do for years.
No Republican has outright said he will ignore Congress and start a war without any kind of authorization, the way Obama threatened to do on Syria.
No Republican has come close to Obama's deportation record.
No Republican has come close to Obama's persecution of whisteblowers.
No Republican has come close to Obama's NDAA which allows the military to arrest you on American soil and throw you in prison indefinitely without a lawyer or a trial.
More. Extreme. Than. The. GOP.