Thursday, April 17, 2014

Google a major donor to George Mason's free-market law center

Google, once disdainful of lobbying, now a master of Washington influence - The Washington Post - Tom Hamburger & Matea Gold:

April 12, 2014 - "In May 2012, the law school at George Mason University hosted a forum billed as a 'vibrant discussion' about Internet search competition ... in large part the work of Google, which maneuvered behind the scenes with GMU’s Law & Economics Center to put on the event. At the time, the company was under FTC investigation over concerns about the dominance of its famed search engine.... On the day of the conference, leading technology and legal experts forcefully rejected the need for the government to take action against Google, making their arguments before some of the very regulators who would help determine its fate.

"The company helped put on two similar conferences at GMU around the time of the 18-month investigation, part of a broad strategy to shape the external debate around the probe, which found that Google’s search practices did not merit legal action....

"The center is among the academic programs at universities such as Harvard and Stanford that have benefited from Google’s largesse. For the past several years, the free-market-oriented law center has received an annual donation from the company, a grant that totaled $350,000 last year, according to the school."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of-washington-influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html
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