<p style="margin: 0px;">I think the incident reflects far more poorly on the part of
New America than it does Google. I notice they have now published on their
website some <a title="correspondence between their CEO and the terminated staffer" href="https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/interest-transparency-new-america-releases-email-correspondence-barry-lynn/" rel="nofollow">correspondence between their CEO and the terminated staffer</a>, but
what is lacking is the correspondence between their CEO and Google executives
on this matter. Perhaps we could ask for some more transparency around that. I find
we are often very quick to denounce the activities of governments and platforms
(as we should), but seem to give think tanks, conservative and libertarian, free reign to behave how they like. Maybe
this is a bit of an over-simplification but that is my perception at least as
to how they are held accountable.<br></p><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,<br></div><div><br></div><div class="protonmail_signature_block "><div class="protonmail_signature_block-user "><div>Ayden Férdeline<br></div><div><a title="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline">linkedin.com/in/ferdeline</a><br></div></div><div class="protonmail_signature_block-proton protonmail_signature_block-empty"><br></div></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="protonmail_quote" type="cite"><div>-------- Original Message --------<br></div><div>Subject: Re: [governance] Google exercises its funding muscle<br></div><div>Local Time: 1 September 2017 6:00 AM<br></div><div>UTC Time: 1 September 2017 05:00<br></div><div>From: parminder@itforchange.net<br></div><div>To: BestBitsList <bestbits@lists.bestbits.net>, governance@lists.igcaucus.org <governance@lists.igcaucus.org><br></div><div><br></div><div> <br></div><p><span class="font" style="font-family:Verdana">two more articles on the same issue</span><br></p><pre wrap="">Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
Aug 30 2017
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html"><https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html></a>
AND
<br></pre><pre wrap="">New America Foundation Head Anne-Marie Slaughter Botches Laundering
Google’s Money, Fires Anti-Trust Team at Eric Schmidt’s Behest -
08/31/2017 - Yves Smith
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/08/new-america-foundation-head-anne-marie-slaughter-botches-laundering-googles-money.html">https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/08/new-america-foundation-head-anne-marie-slaughter-botches-laundering-googles-money.html</a><br></pre><div><br></div><div>We should ideally be doing a statement on this very significant and
structural issue, basic to civil society work in this area. What do
people here say?<br></div><div> <br></div><div> parminder <br></div><div> <br></div><div> <br></div><div> <br></div><div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Friday 01 September 2017 10:26 AM,
parminder wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite"><p>Quotes from the below article, which connects to the discussion
(or non discussion) we recently had here on Google's funding of
non profit/ academic research in digital area. <br></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Firing Lynn and his
team “raises a lot of questions,” a Warren aide told
HuffPost. Warren, herself, later tweeted her concerns.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">A senior aide to a
progressive House Democrat, who commented on the
condition of anonymity, called the firings “an example
of the way that funding think tanks is a way to achieve
policy outcomes, in the same way that lobbying and
funding campaigns is. It’s a business expense.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Jonathan Taplin, the
author of <i>Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook,
Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined
Democracy</i>, was more blunt in his assessment of
what happened at New America.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“It’s just classic
monopoly muscle,” he told HuffPost. “This is the way
bullies act.”</span><br></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="size" style="font-size:undefinedpx"><b><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Google Just Proved That
Monopolies Imperil Democracy, Not Just The Economy</span></b></span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/google-monopoly-barry-lynn_us_59a738fde4b010ca289a1155?section=us_politics">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/google-monopoly-barry-lynn_us_59a738fde4b010ca289a1155?section=us_politics</a></span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Barry
Lynn and his team of anti-monopoly researchers were fired by a
think tank after criticizing the search giant.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">WASHINGTON
― For the past decade, former business journalist Barry Lynn
has used his perch at the New America Foundation to warn
politicians and the public that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barry-lynn-washington-corporations_us_57c8a6a7e4b0e60d31de6433">a new era of corporate monopolies
threatened not only American workers, but also democracy
itself.</a></span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Lynn
was just proven right: New America has fired him as head of
its Open Markets program along with his team of about 10
researchers and journalists, after they called for an
antitrust investigation of the think tank’s largest longtime
donor, Google.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">On
June 27, the Open Markets team in a <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/open-markets/press-releases/open-markets-applauds-european-commissions-finding-against-google-abuse-dominance/">150-word statement</a> called for the
Federal Trade Commission to follow the lead of the European
Union, which leveled a $2.7 billion fine on Google for
violating antitrust laws. Since New America’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/15/arts/silicon-valley-s-new-think-tank-stakes-out-radical-center.html">start in 1999</a>, Google has given
it $21 million. And Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of
Alphabet, Inc., Google’s parent company, served as New
America’s chairman from 2008 through mid-2016.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">According
to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html?_r=0">report on Wednesday in The New York
Times</a>, Lynn was called on the carpet by New America head
Anne-Marie Slaughter shortly after the Open Markets program
praised the E.U.’s decision to find Google in violation of
antitrust law for providing preferential placement to its own
products and those of its subsidiaries over its rivals in
search results. Schmidt, the Times reported, had expressed to
Slaughter his “displeasure” with the statement backing the
E.U.’s move.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Slaughter,
according to an email obtained by the Times, told Lynn that he
and his team had to leave New America. The firing was, “in no
way based on the content of your work,” she wrote, while also
saying Lynn was “imperiling the institution as a whole.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Two
current members of the Open Markets team confirmed this
timeline of events to HuffPost. Lynn and his Open Markets
colleagues were told to depart New America two days after the
statement that supported the E.U. antitrust fine and called
upon “U.S. enforcers” to “build upon this important precedent<i>. </i>The
team, though, stuck around in an attempt to question New
America’s leadership about whether it really wanted to fire
the entire group.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“We
were trying to be, like, ’Are you sure you want to do this
because it sort of seems bad,” Matt Stoller, a fellow at the
Open Markets Program, told HuffPost. “Are you sure you want to
prove us right? Are you sure you want to back a monopoly in
such an obvious and clumsy way? We were negotiating with
them.” (Stoller is an occasional HuffPost contributor.)</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Despite
those negotiations, Slaughter on Wednesday officially
terminated Lynn and his team. </span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Slaughter
disputed the Times story, saying in a <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/new-americas-response-new-york-times/">statement</a> that the claim “that
Google lobbied New America to expel the Open Markets program”
was “false.” Instead, she said that Lynn refused “to adhere to
New America’s standards of openness and institutional
collegiality.” She offered no explanation for firing the
entire Open Markets team.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">A
Google spokeswoman denied any involvement in Lynn’s firing in
an email to HuffPost. She also said that Schmidt did not
threaten to cut off funding for the think tank because of the
Open Markets statement on Google’s antitrust fine.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“We
support hundreds of organizations that promote a free and open
Internet, greater access to information, and increased
opportunity,” Riva Sciuto, the Google spokesperson, said in
the statement. “We don’t agree with every group 100 percent of
the time, and while we sometimes respectfully disagree, we
respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions, and
policy perspectives.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">New
America did not immediately respond to a request for comment
to HuffPost.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Lynn
is now building an independent think tank to continue his
anti-monopoly work with his New America team. The group has
already <a href="https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/">launched a campaign</a> aimed at
mobilizing public opposition to the power of modern-day
monopolies by highlighting Google’s power to quash independent
research like that by the Open Markets team.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Its
supporters say this case underscores that argument.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Lynn
and his colleagues “have long argued that monopolies are a
problem for the economy, but they’re also a problem for
democracy,” Zephyr Teachout, a fellow at Open Markets and
board member of its new campaign ― called Citizens Against
Monopolies ― told HuffPost. “This kind of proves the point.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">It’s
not as though the Open Markets team needed to get fired to
buttress their concerns about monopoly power. Their efforts
already have been influential ― more so than work by many
other think tanks.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The
Democratic Party recently adopted the team’s warnings about
monopolies in its <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-antitrust_us_5976572fe4b0a8a40e817612">“A Better Deal” platform</a>.
Politicians ― including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.),
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Ro
Khanna (D-Calif.) ― are pushing for enhanced antitrust
enforcement and calling out concentrations of economic power
more than before.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Open
Markets has helped lead the economic debate to a “more
populist strain over the past couple of years,” Marshall
Steinbaum, a fellow at the progressive economics think tank
Roosevelt Institute, told HuffPost.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Firing
Lynn and his team “raises a lot of questions,” a Warren aide
told HuffPost. Warren, herself, later tweeted her concerns.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">A
senior aide to a progressive House Democrat, who commented on
the condition of anonymity, called the firings “an example of
the way that funding think tanks is a way to achieve policy
outcomes, in the same way that lobbying and funding campaigns
is. It’s a business expense.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Jonathan
Taplin, the author of <i>Move Fast and Break Things: How
Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined
Democracy</i>, was more blunt in his assessment of what
happened at New America.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“It’s
just classic monopoly muscle,” he told HuffPost. “This is the
way bullies act.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The
internal workings of New America, though, is not the real
issue, Stoller said. The public needs to recognize Google as
an autocratic private power that is exerting itself in the
economy and in policy to increase its own power over people,
he argued.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“We
love a lot of the people at New America,” Stoller said. “We
think their work is great. ... This is not an issue of New
America. This is an issue about monopoly and Google.”</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">And
Google is undeniably a monopoly. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-google-monopoly-2014-9">Just ask monopoly proponent and
billionaire investor Peter Thiel</a>, who has said the
company is able to offer so many wonderful perks to its
employees because it doesn’t have to worry too much about
competition. It controls <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-search_engine-US-monthly-201608-201608-bar">80 percent</a> of the market for
online search and <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-search_engine-US-monthly-201608-201608-bar">54 percent</a> of the browser market
in the U.S.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Google
and Facebook, another powerful online platform monopoly, have <a href="https://www.recode.net/2017/5/2/15516674/global-ad-spending-charts">gobbled up practically every new
online advertising dollar</a> (thanks to their past
acquisitions of online advertising companies) in recent years
while <a href="https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platform-press-how-silicon-valley-reengineered-journalism.php">pressuring news organizations</a>,
including HuffPost, to publish directly to their platforms.
Google’s control of internet search has given it the power to
squeeze money away from other websites (see: <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com">CelebrityNetWorth.com</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/technology/yelp-google-european-union-antitrust.html?mcubz=3">Yelp.com</a>). Google’s dominant
position as an advertising seller has also given it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/business/media/google-facebook-news-media-alliance.html?mcubz=3">increasing power over newsrooms</a> (although not as much as Facebook).</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The
company ― which once went by the motto “Don’t be evil” ― has
also sought to replicate its economic power in political and
policy spheres.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Google
has previously sought to pressure a nonprofit over its
criticism of the company. In 2009, Google’s head of public
policy reached out to the foundation funding the
California-based Consumer Watchdog to warn it about continuing
to underwrite the work by the pro-privacy group. That work was
critical of many of Google’s privacy policies.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">In
the past decade, Google also has poured tens of millions of
dollars into campaign contributions, lobbying firms, think
tanks and policy nonprofits in the past decade.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">This
political investment soared after 2011 when Google’s antitrust
issues first came under the microscope. Its lobbying expenses
doubled from $9.6 million in 2011 to $18.2 million in 2012,
and have not fallen below $15 million since. In 2011, Google
gave grants to 44 different nonprofits and think tanks. That
number jumped to 81 in 2012 and now sits at 170.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Goggle
executives enjoyed <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/">unrivaled access</a> to the White
House under President <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/barack-obama"> Barack Obama</a>, visiting hundreds
of times, according to Secret Service visitor logs. Google has
also pumped <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286">millions of dollars into research at
universities</a>, often to buttress its public policy
positions, and is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-chromebooks-schools.html">pushing its own agenda for public
school education</a> across the country.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Google’s
huge increase in political investment post-2011 was in direct
reaction to the Federal Trade Commission <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/25/business/la-fi-google-ftc-20110625">opening an antitrust investigation</a> into whether it abused its market position in internet
searches. The FTC commissioners eventually dropped the
investigation in exchange for small concessions by the
company, despite <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274">a report by the agency’s legal team
that labeled Google a “monopoly”</a> and supported a full
investigation.</span><br></p><div><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“The ‘A’ word is the one
thing that can stop the music,” Luther Lowe, Yelp’s vice
president of public policy, said of Google’s interest in
antitrust issues. “It’s the one that’s an all-hands-on-deck
situation.”</span> <br></div><pre wrap=""><br></pre></blockquote></blockquote><div><br></div>