Resistance, as they say, is futile. According to the Google Transparency Project, and reported by watchdog.org "More than 250 people have moved from Google and related firms to the federal government or vice versa since President Barack Obama took office."
22 former White House officials went to work for Google and 31 executives from Google and related firms went to work at the White House or were appointed to federal advisory boards by Obama. Those boards include the President's Council on Science and Technology and the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
Of additional interest, besides revolving doors between Google and the FCC, 25 officials in national security, intelligence or the Department of Defense joined Google, and three Google executives went to work for the DOD.
I think ordinary discussion of market forces, laissez-faire and the role of Government is irrelevant in regards to a system in which this is normal and institutionalized practice.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @10:42AM
Suppose this wasn't about Google but Apple, and during the whole encryption fiasco they oh so reluctantly passed on the keys.
Would say there might be a conflict on interest?
What do you make of Qwest's refusal of NSA surveillance requests and the prosecution of Joseph Nacchio shortly there afterwards for insider trading?
One of the givens with power is to absolutely avoid any inference of abuse or favoritism (well, at least for the peons).
It does seem the further up the food chain you go, that type of discretion gets malleable.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 11 2016, @02:08PM
Are you suggesting that oh, the mighty Apple's employees have higher moral rectitude [opensecrets.org] than Google's [opensecrets.org], this is why they aren't engaged in anything resembling "revolving door"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford