[governance] Google exercises its funding muscle

Fri Sep 1 07:23:45 EDT 2017

Hi,

I did read the emails in the link that I shared. I still think it reflects poorly on New America.

May I suggest you read through [this Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/hshaban/status/903084804178104320)to see how New America’s response is factually incorrect.

Best wishes,

Ayden Férdeline
[linkedin.com/in/ferdeline](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline)

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [governance] Google exercises its funding muscle
> Local Time: 1 September 2017 12:17 PM
> UTC Time: 1 September 2017 11:17
> From: dogwallah at gmail.com
> To: Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com>
> parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>, BestBitsList <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>, governance at lists.igcaucus.org <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>
> Hi,
>
> If you read more than the hit pieces about this, it does not reflect
> pporly on New America at all.
>
> The guy acted like douchebag, they gave him loads of chances to do
> the right thing, he refused to take them.
>
> read the emails in the link you provided, then read this one:
>
> https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/new-americas-response-new-york-times/
>
> "Statement to be attributed to Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America:
>
> Today’s New York Times story implies that Google lobbied New America
> to expel the Open Markets program because of this press release. I
> want to be clear: this implication is absolutely false."
>
> The "anti-Google at all costs" types see this as red meat for their
> cause. Sad. Bigly Sad.
>
> Regards,
>
> McTim
>
> On Fri, Sep 1, 2017 at 6:13 AM, Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com> wrote:
>> 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
>> correspondence between their CEO and the terminated staffer, 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.
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Ayden Férdeline
>> linkedin.com/in/ferdeline
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: Re: [governance] Google exercises its funding muscle
>> Local Time: 1 September 2017 6:00 AM
>> UTC Time: 1 September 2017 05:00
>> From: parminder at itforchange.net
>> To: BestBitsList <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>,
>> governance at lists.igcaucus.org <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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 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, 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, 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 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
>> 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. 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, 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 of the market for online
>> search and 54 percent 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 (thanks to their past
>> acquisitions of online advertising companies) in recent years while
>> pressuring news organizations, 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 and
>> Yelp.com). Google’s dominant position as an advertising seller has also
>> given it increasing power over newsrooms (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 to the White House under
>> President Barack Obama, visiting hundreds of times, according to Secret
>> Service visitor logs. Google has also pumped millions of dollars into
>> research at universities, often to buttress its public policy positions, and
>> is pushing its own agenda for public school education 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
>> 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” 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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>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> McTim
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
> route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel
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