Google-Funded Think Tank Fired Google Critics After They Dared Criticize Google by Sam Biddle and David Dayen.
From the post:
THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION’S Open Markets group was a rare, loud voice of protest against Google’s ever-growing consolidation of economic and technological power around the world. But New America, like many of its fellow think tanks, received millions in funding from one of the targets of its anti-monopoly work, and according to a New York Times report today, pulled the plug after the company’s chief executive had enough dissent.
After EU regulators fined Google $2.7 billion earlier this summer, Barry Lynn, who ran the Open Markets division, cheered the decision, adding that “U.S. enforcers should apply the traditional American approach to network monopoly, which is to cleanly separate ownership of the network from ownership of the products and services sold on that network, as they did in the original Microsoft case of the late 1990s.” It didn’t take long for Lynn and his colleagues to suffer the consequences, the Times reports:
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Google has long suppressed speech as a government toady but its open suppression of criticism portents wider and more active censorship of the marketplace of ideas.
Biddle and Dayen do a great job of identifying those who bowed to “displeasure” and those who were displeased. Something to keep in mind when deciding how to act on your displeasure with this misconduct by Google.
We all know that Google makes invaluable contributions to any number of projects but that isn’t a “bye” for abuse of their economic power or the sycophants they fund.