GOOGLE’S INFLUENCE

“Current coverage of the tech world leans heavily toward products, start-ups, and personalities.
A website on money and power would instead concentrate on its growing political might. Ten years ago, for
example Google had a one-person lobbying shop in Washington; today, it has more than one hundred lobbyists working out of an office roughly the size of the White House. In addition to such traditional lobbying, Google is financing research at universities and think tanks, investing in advocacy groups, and "funding pro-business coalitions cast as public-interest projects," as Tom Hamburger and Matea Gold reported in 2014 in The Washington Post.

“They described how in the spring of 2012 Google - facing possible legal action by the FTC over the dominance of its search engine-played a behind-the-scenes part in organizing a conference at George Mason University, to which it is a large contributor. It made sure that the program was heavily weighted with speakers sympathetic to Google and, according to the Post, it arranged for many FTC economists and lawyers to hear them. In the end, the commission decided against taking legal action. Just why could be a good subject for inquiry. Today, Google is working hard to protect its right to collect consumer data and to that end has sought the support of conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation. The type of string-pulling described by'the Post goes on routinely and deserves more routine coverage.”

Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.