Here’s a Scary Thought – Google.Gov

I read an enlightening piece this week in The New Atlantis – a very serious magazine – that I hope is read soon by Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, every member of the House Freedom caucus, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the conservative minority among Senate Republicans and all Americans who are suspicious of mega-rich, mega-powerful corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Written by Andrew White, the headline is very simple – not to mention alarming: “Google.gov.” The subheadline: “Amid growing calls to break up Google, are we missing a quiet alignment between ‘smart’ government and the universal information engine?” . . .

I’ll summarize a few of the alarming things you will learn from this piece – with my help, of course:

Serious publications from left to right have been paying attention to Google lately. In February, the New York Times Magazine published “The Case Against Google,” about how “the search giant is squelching competition before it begins.” The Wall Street Journal published a similar article in January on the “antitrust case” against Google, along with Facebook and Amazon, whose market shares it compared to Standard Oil and AT&T at their peaks.

Google and Barack Obama’s administration had a “uniquely close relationship. Their special bond is best ascribed not to the revolving door, although hundreds of meetings were held between the two; nor to crony capitalism, although hundreds of people have switched jobs from Google to the Obama administration or vice versa; nor to lobbying prowess, although Google is one of the top corporate lobbyists. Rather, the ultimate source of the special bond between Google and the Obama White House – and modern progressive government more broadly – has been their common ethos. Both view society’s challenges today as social-engineering problems, whose resolutions depend mainly on facts and objective reasoning. Both view information as being at once ruthlessly value-free and yet, when properly grasped, a powerful force for ideological and social reform. And so both aspire to reshape Americans’ informational context, ensuring that we make choices based only upon what they consider the right kinds of facts – while denying that there would be any values or politics embedded in the effort.”

(Read more from “Here’s a Scary Thought – Google.Gov” HERE)

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