[governance] Google exercises its funding muscle

[parminder]

two more articles on the same issue

Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
Aug 30 2017
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html>

AND

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

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/08/new-america-foundation-head-anne-marie-slaughter-botches-laundering-googles-money.html


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?

parminder


On Friday 01 September 2017 10:26 AM, parminder wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>             Firing Lynn and his team “raises a lot of questions,” a
>             Warren aide told HuffPost. Warren, herself, later tweeted
>             her concerns.
>
>             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.”
>
>             Jonathan Taplin, the author of /Move Fast and Break
>             Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture
>             and Undermined Democracy/, was more blunt in his
>             assessment of what happened at New America.
>
>             “It’s just classic monopoly muscle,” he told HuffPost.
>             “This is the way bullies act.”
>
> *Google Just Proved That Monopolies Imperil Democracy, Not Just The
> Economy*
>
>  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/google-monopoly-barry-lynn_us_59a738fde4b010ca289a1155?section=us_politics
>
> Barry Lynn and his team of anti-monopoly researchers were fired by a
> think tank after criticizing the search giant.
>
> 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 new era of corporate monopolies
> threatened not only American workers, but also democracy itself.
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barry-lynn-washington-corporations_us_57c8a6a7e4b0e60d31de6433>
>
> 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.
>
> On June 27, the Open Markets team in a 150-word statement
> <https://www.newamerica.org/open-markets/press-releases/open-markets-applauds-european-commissions-finding-against-google-abuse-dominance/>
> 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 start in 1999
> <http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/15/arts/silicon-valley-s-new-think-tank-stakes-out-radical-center.html>,
> 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.
>
> According to a report on Wednesday in The New York Times
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html?_r=0>,
> 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.
>
> 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.”
>
> 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/. /The team, though, stuck around in an
> attempt to question New America’s leadership about whether it really
> wanted to fire the entire group.
>
> “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.)
>
> Despite those negotiations, Slaughter on Wednesday officially
> terminated Lynn and his team. 
>
>  
>
> Slaughter disputed the Times story, saying in a statement
> <https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/new-americas-response-new-york-times/> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> “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.”
>
> New America did not immediately respond to a request for comment to
> HuffPost.
>
> Lynn is now building an independent think tank to continue his
> anti-monopoly work with his New America team. The group has already
> launched a campaign <https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/> 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.
>
> Its supporters say this case underscores that argument.
>
> 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.”
>
> 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.
>
> The Democratic Party recently adopted the team’s warnings about
> monopolies in its “A Better Deal” platform
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-antitrust_us_5976572fe4b0a8a40e817612>.
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Firing Lynn and his team “raises a lot of questions,” a Warren aide
> told HuffPost. Warren, herself, later tweeted her concerns.
>
> 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.”
>
> Jonathan Taplin, the author of /Move Fast and Break Things: How
> Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined
> Democracy/, was more blunt in his assessment of what happened at New
> America.
>
> “It’s just classic monopoly muscle,” he told HuffPost. “This is the
> way bullies act.”
>
> 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.
>
> “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.”
>
> And Google is undeniably a monopoly. Just ask monopoly proponent and
> billionaire investor Peter Thiel
> <http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-google-monopoly-2014-9>,
> 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 80 percent
> <http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-search_engine-US-monthly-201608-201608-bar>
> of the market for online search and 54 percent
> <http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-search_engine-US-monthly-201608-201608-bar>
> of the browser market in the U.S.
>
> Google and Facebook, another powerful online platform monopoly, have
> gobbled up practically every new online advertising dollar
> <https://www.recode.net/2017/5/2/15516674/global-ad-spending-charts>
> (thanks to their past acquisitions of online advertising companies) in
> recent years while pressuring news organizations
> <https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platform-press-how-silicon-valley-reengineered-journalism.php>,
> 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: CelebrityNetWorth.com
> <https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com>
> and Yelp.com
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/technology/yelp-google-european-union-antitrust.html?mcubz=3>).
> Google’s dominant position as an advertising seller has also given it
> increasing power over newsrooms
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/business/media/google-facebook-news-media-alliance.html?mcubz=3>
> (although not as much as Facebook).
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Goggle executives enjoyed unrivaled access
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/>
> to the White House under President Barack Obama
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/barack-obama>, visiting hundreds
> of times, according to Secret Service visitor logs. Google has also
> pumped millions of dollars into research at universities
> <https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286>,
> often to buttress its public policy positions, and is pushing its own
> agenda for public school education
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-chromebooks-schools.html>
> across the country.
>
> Google’s huge increase in political investment post-2011 was in direct
> reaction to the Federal Trade Commission opening an antitrust
> investigation
> <http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/25/business/la-fi-google-ftc-20110625>
> 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 report by the agency’s
> legal team that labeled Google a “monopoly”
> <https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-of-google-1426793274>
> and supported a full investigation.
>
> “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.”

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