It turns out we got played. The WSJ report that Google was funding research specifically to influence lawmakers for its own benefit seems to have been an Oracle-created hit job.
Google’s director of public policy Leslie Miller said the CfA’s report was “highly misleading” and accused it of inflating the numbers by attributing funding to Google when it actually came from associations to which Google belongs.
Miller also points out the non-profit’s own transparency issues, given that the CfA’s only known backer is Oracle.
I should’ve checked the source of the actual report – and specifically, its funding – and I did not. My apologies. While this certainly doesn’t magically mean Google is a saint, it does cast this specific report in a very, very different light.
“as a society, need to look at the amount of power we have let corporations gather up”
I see a large part of the governments role is to put boundaries of what the market can do.
For example when it seems the market does not solve the “tragedy of the commons” problem for some segment of the market the government might need to step in with a limited measure.
This is exactly why the influence of companies on the government has to be the most limited. Otherwise you get what is called ‘regulatory capture’. Which is worse than no regulation at all.
Edited 2017-07-19 08:29 UTC
I agree with Lenine, behemoths like Google, Apple & co must be kept on check. It’s very honest of you to admit you were wrong.
Honestly, I’m much more worried about Goldman Sachs and similar companies and in the tech. industry the cable companies and other very large ISPs in for example the US and Microsoft. Who have proven in the past how they work.
Google and Apple in comparison seem to be ‘nice’ companies when we are talking about this subject.
Edited 2017-07-19 14:50 UTC
Do you think these companies would work differently if they were collectively owned by the people who work there, and the board made up of those owner/workers?
The government is already completely controlled by private bankers and right now politics is mostly a puppet show to hide that fact.
Regulatoin in many cases should be optional anyway since it violates the human right to freedom. But appearantly many Americans do not want freedom nowadays.
Surprise fucking surprise.
I asked for more information about the original report in the previous article because it was behind a paywall and nobody could tell me anything, but I did see the punchline “Google cannot be trusted because they buy politicians through academic papers” repeated in several places already. This seems to be a good example of real fake news; Just enough truth to seem legit and just enough feeding of the gut to make people want to believe it.
So although I am very happy that Thom brings this to our attention I hope he simply won’t provide summaries that cannot be verified because of paywalls in the future anymore, or can provide actual verifiable data/examples in the future in addition to his usual snarky remark.
Now it is important to note, like Thom does, that this doesn’t clear Google of anything. But I strongly believe in “innocent until proven guilty” so for now Google is in the clear….except for the hypocrisy in this statement:
So when Oracle backs an organisation that does something it is “highly misleading”
but when Google backs an organisation that does something it is okay?
Again, I will side with Google here because:
* Google is only 1 of several backers while Oracle was the only backer
* Google was backing the light side (academia) while Oracle was backing the dark side (attack article)
* Oracle has proven to be mostly evil while Google has proven to be only partly evil
That’s not the point. But if a report blames someone and the organization behind this report is only backed by one company or only concurrent companies, the result of such report is questionable.
The real problem is transparency. For any of these things I want to have a freely available list of backers.
If I see for example “400kUSD – sponsor undisclosed”, the report is worth noting.
There is a world of difference between having a single backer, which basically means Oracle may well have written the report itself, to having multiple backers, which means the organisation is more likely to be balanced as it is less likely to only advocate one company.
Just confirms that Ellis is the POS he always has been
Thanks Thom. Point remains that We individuals lack the resources. Every bit of info does nothing but feeding “-isms”. Apologies to Google.
Just google “white unity”
If you think that is the correct results, then holler.
Wonder if they had their fingers crossed behind their collective backs whilst they said that?
Never know.
The real lesson here was not to trust fake news and fake media. Don’t quote WSJ et al. (Even though Google didn’t deny anything except that they do it less than was claimed.)
But you’re again on the verge of making another mistake: the fact that Oracle is their only PUBLIC fund source does not mean that it’s a hit job by Oracle. Much worrying are the names who don’t want to go public.
Edited 2017-07-23 06:50 UTC