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According to The Guardian Google is a major funder of the New America Foundation, some researchers of which criticized monopolies and lauded the EU for levying a record fine for Google for antitrust reasons. This apparently wasn't received well at the advertisement company and subsequently the team who did the research got the boot.
Now might be a good time to consider your dependence on all services GOOG.
The New America Foundation is one of the leading left-leaning policy groups in the US and is led by Anne-Marie Slaughter, an author, foreign policy analyst and political scientist. In June, Barry Lynn, a senior fellow who led the thinktank's Open Markets initiative, wrote a blogpost praising the EU's decision to levy a record €2.42bn ($2.7bn) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules and abusing its market dominance. "Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today," Lynn wrote.
According to The New York Times, shortly after the post was published Schmidt, who chaired New America until 2016, contacted Slaughter to communicate his displeasure.
The blogpost was temporarily removed from New America's website before being reposted. Days later, Slaughter told Lynn that "the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways", according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn obtained by the Times. Slaughter said the decision was "in no way based on the content of your work" although she she accused Lynn of "imperiling the institution as a whole".
New America has received roughly $21m from Google, Schmidt and his family foundation since 1999. The organisation's main conference room in Washington DC is called the Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.
Lynn and his 10-strong team have now set up Citizens Against Monopoly. "Is Google trying to censor journalists and researchers who fight dangerous monopolies?" the website asks. "Sadly, the answer is: YES."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:53AM (13 children)
I'm sorry, but if you bite the hand that feeds you, the hand may stop feeding you.
And that's not censorship, or anything close to it. Suck it up.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:58AM (1 child)
I hear you like an abusive relationship. Want me to chain you up in my closet and I'll feed you out of a doggy bowl?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @04:52PM
You can't stop assholes from being assholes, but you can keep your distance from them. This story is a good example for anyone who wants Gaggle on their resume, don't bother folks! They are evil, massively undeniably evil. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if all their PC crap is actually intentional in order to further divide people. Or perhaps they really are trying to change the world by enforcing highly questionable rules, in which case they are vastly overestimating their importance. Even quite liberal people such as myself are turned off by their evil nature, and no amount of PC goodwill is going to change that. In fact the recent stories show that they've simply folded the concept of PC into their wider plans for eeeevilll.
I had a roommate that worked for yelp and then moved to google. I told him about yelp basically acting like the mafia and he wouldn't hear a word of it, typical young smart person underestimating how fucked up humanity can be. So now he's at google, hopefully he gets wiser after his years over there but I doubt it, there is a certain level of arrogance that requires massive blowback to spur change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:18AM (4 children)
I don't think anyone is arguing that this is illegal censorship (unless the policy group has some interesting status I'm unfamiliar with), but the term still applies even if you don't like the negative connotations. The issue at hand is that we all rely on Google (and others) to some degree but we rarely take seriously the fact that we fundamentally cannot trust them. This is clearly the spirit the story was posted in. But you... you better mis-characterize the complaint and shit on the concerned to prove how smart or jaded or capitalist or contrarian or whatever it is you think you are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FakeBeldin on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:41AM (3 children)
2 things. Firstly,
Someone is definitely arguing that this is censorship. The legality of which wasn't under question.
Second, the guy who got fired blames someone else than the persons firing him.
There's no backing of this claim.
Equally likely (if not much more likely), the boss got upset at the idea of upsetting their primary financial income source and decided to take unilateral action without Google needing to contact them. Which is exactly what everyone who was not fired is claiming.
Maybe it's unthinkable to the snowflake that Google didn't request his termination, but that doesn't make it true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:50AM
Very classy of you to leave out what he immediately said following that:
This is vastly worse than a one off incidence of them doing the wrong thing. Google has gained, and earned, a reputation for brutal retaliation against any speech that doesn't fit their chosen narrative. It's really quite terrifying that this is the company that the vast majority of the western world relies on to seek out information. We never think it true, but shows time and again that indeed absolute power corrupts absolutely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:18PM
You could try reading the whole comment before replying. The distinction between 'censorship' and 'illegal censorship' is laid out.
Once you finish the first sentence, you may wish to read the entirety of the next sentence, and so on, until you have read ALL the words. Then, should you reply, do not reply as though different words, or differently ordered words, were used. Thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:16PM
So the pressure from Google is merely implicit rather than explicit then?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:44AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
Google will learn the lesson too late. What they do is self destructive to the core. For every one of the chaps that speaks out and is shit-canned, there is 10 or 100 even more who disagree with Google but do not speak up. Tell me what is the upside of having thousands of people who work for you secretly hate you? What will happen to Google will be fucking barbaric, and totally self-inflicted. I'm talkign about senior people leaving to competitors or starting their own competing products, as Google spends more and more of it's money trying to maintain it's dominant position instead of innovating. Their technology will go from top-notch, to just OK, to ORACLE tier. Their ranks will dwindle, only to be replenished with psychopaths. Their work environment will become a toxic shithole, driving out every last bit of competent yet somewhat unpolitical talent because no one wants to work there. And soon enough the only people they will get to work for them are H1B slaves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 01 2017, @10:55AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:27PM
This isn't even the right argument. Who gives a shit why he was fired. There is no question that if you go against the company line, your days at the company are numbered. Censorship isn't the problem.
The problem is that there can be no such "think tank" if they are given money by Google to announce ideas that benefit Google. The place is a sham and this person stated something to that effect and was fired.
The only suprise is that people are picking apart the arguments as if somehow this is a free speech issue.
(Score: 1) by messymerry on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:21PM (1 child)
So, we should stop telling the truth to keep our benevolent masters happy in their cosseted little world???
Not happening, the hoi polloi will eventually rise up as they always have in the past.
;-D
Only fools equate a PhD with a Swiss Army Knife...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:23PM
Yes, if we're cowards.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org