The LA Times talks about something which joins your keyboard to the White House.
Its employees supported Obama, and four Googlers served on his transition team. Now the Internet giant hopes to win support for network neutrality and expanding high-speed Internet access. In October, Google was only hours from being sued by the Justice Department as a Web-search monopolist. Today, less than three years after it made its first Washington hire, the Internet giant is poised to capitalize on its backing of President Obama and pursue its agenda in the nation’s capital. …
Google says the main reason it has improved its standing in Washington is that Obama’s tech priorities mirror its own. He has endorsed network neutrality. His technology agenda also calls for expanding broadband Internet access to rural areas and appointing the first government-wide chief technology officer …
AdvertisementSymbolizing its new stature, the company co-hosted a glitzy Inauguration Day party here. The event was studded with celebrities, including Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba and Glenn Close. Though Obama did not make an appearance, the event drew influential political figures such as Obama transition chief John Podesta and Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
“A lot of people are united to create a grass-roots service democracy, and Google is playing a bigger role in that than anyone knows,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said as dance music echoed through the grand Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium.
Who gets to lay down the rules for the new highway of the information age — the Internet — is sure to be at the core of Google’s interests, and those who oppose it. It’s a struggle that will involve everyone: content providers, startups, telecommunications companies, advocates of free speech, guardians against hate speech. Only the dim outlines of things are visible as yet. But watch this space.
“a grass-roots service democracy”
—
“That’s not exactly what we had planned”
– The Founders
…I’m still waiting to learn the great gravity and significance of that prominently EMPTY desktop in the Oval Office.
An Homage to the Great One’s Dependence on his Blackberry?
A Preview of Hate Speech Prosecutions in the future! -
Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistan
A Taliban leader daily addresses the residents of Swat on banned activities and names those killed for violations.
Above, Taliban punished a man in the Swat Valley.
What’s interesting is that everyone seems to forget that the backbone of the Internet is supported by paying customers… You!
Extending millions (billions in total) of dollars of equipment in sparsely populated areas is never cost effective. To expand the Rural Telecommunication Act of 1996′s mandate will be the first sign of this. Someone has to pay for the expansion. Again, it will be you, unless Telecommunications companies are nationalized.. Then, again, the payer will be…..You!
I think that Google learned a lot from the association with the PRC, and helping the Great Firewall of China.
I think I wonder if that is good?
Monopoly Unionized Education @ Work
“A Lot of people are Racist”
So that is their new name for communism: “graas root service democracy”
But will it play in Peoria?
Editing the wayback machine is the way to go.
I seem to recall reading recently that Google has been laying off employees. Pour encourager les autres?
Interenet speeds are good in the Washington DC area. It seemed they were better up on the North Shore of Oahu when I was there for a month last summer. However, out in the country in central Pennsylvania, the connection speeds are poor. However, I’m sure the connection speeds are good in the many large towns in Pennsylvania.
When people can live anywhere and meet virtually from anywhere quickly conveniently and cheaply–then the flight from the big cities will accelerate.
That said, I’ve been working from home for a couple of years. As business has expanded I’ve hired people over the internet. But from time to time I’ll work in the same room with my nephew for a day. I enjoy the guy’s company. He has some good tunes that he brings over on his laptop.
I’ll see if I can get him to send me the links to them. I’ll post them here.
Is there any possibility that American internet companies are getting hinky about the UN’s attempt to take over the internet and corral what’s been going on, and are merely trying to bring the Administration up to speed on the necessity of stepping firmly on those attempts?
Nahncee @ 11
Yeah. Right.
Hope.
Change.
DanM:
I think the technology will evolve in favor of the idea.
The REA was Roosevelt’s baby and grew out of the idea that electricity was too vital to be left to the private sector. TVA and WPPS were part of that campaign which included strenuous efforts to destroy privately held utilities. Still exists as the Rural Utilities Service, part of USDA.
Cobb County Ga is 30 Mi from downtown Atlanta and a major urban area in its own right. The electricity supplier is Cobb Energy, a creature of the REA. Dont doubt the ability of a past-sell-date bureaucracy to perpetuate itself.
Google’s leaders are hard left. Not surprising, since they went from grad students in the lefty bay area (Stanford) to billionaires in almost no time.
Google is both a technological miracle and a potential threat to liberty.
re: >7. Mongoose:
So that is their new name for communism: “grass root service democracy”
Socialist concepts, like many types of garbage, lend themselves well to recycling. This is a rehash of a strategy put forth in the 80′s and 90′s by Clinton friend and advisor Derek Shearer. Shearer wrote in his 1980 book, Economic Democracy:
“Socialism has a bad name in America and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that… the words, economic democracy are an adequate replacement.”
Even before that, however, the Louisiana “Kingfish”, Huey Long, when asked “if fascism would ever come to America”, responded, “Yes, but we’ll call it democracy”.
Some layoffs recently at Google? I would like to see some of our young gaining employment at Google. We need to start doing what the left has been doing for 30 some years.
Google has layoffs. Microsoft has layoffs. Starbucks is laying off 1,000 with more cuts planned.
Reality check: the influence of Google/Craigslist billionaires is that of cutting checks for money. Powerful but not everything. And THEIR wealth is ultimately tied to the stock market and valuation of financial instruments, not exactly a solid source of wealth like land or oil or gas or metals.
IT/Web/Software engineer employment has collapsed. Unemployment rates are probably around 35% when under-employed and “left the profession” folks are counted. Most development akes place in India or China where it’s junk but dirt cheap. Everyone else lives day to day.
If Obama wanted to construct a TVA like patronage network putting a LOT of White men to work, he’d have to invest in broadband FIBER everywhere to the last mile, making video on demand a reality rapidly, and jump starting lots of innovation and employment among lots of well-paid White software engineers, who would be grateful to the man who gave them a job. Again. [Assuming he choked off or forbad off-shore development.]
That’s politics at it’s most elemental and effective. Put a lot of people to work, make them obligated you and party, and keep them employed. Daley understands that.
Obama is part of the pay-to-play elite model. Raising money from corrupt cronies, ala Daley, but NOT putting the money into employment patronage. Robert Reich wants no White men, particularly skilled White construction workers or professionals, to benefit from the bailout.
It’s called “No White (Men) Need Apply.” Already the White male professionals are starting to get the message. Creating a large class of men, who used to earn good money, now getting nothing, with no hope of moving back up. That’s a classic pre-revolutionary condition and Obama looks not like Danton or Napoleon but Louis XVIII. Floundering. Caught in the racial demagoguery of the past, trying to sneak “Reparations” in by the back door of the bailout, and refusing the opportunities to create vast patronage networks to create political backing.
Yes, Newmark and the Google Billionaires can write checks, and try and influence the internet. But the internet itself is not as influential as millions of mostly White male software engineers out of work and angry that they are told to get to the back of the bus by their would-be savior.
No one hates the Big Man more than the rejected patronage seeker. I’m not projecting a Charles Giteau, by the way, more like a large political opposition centered around economic populism while Obama pursues economic elitism. Obama seems stuck in the past and we are seeing signs of that in his popularity ratings.
Wha? Certainly not here in the Phoenix, AZ area. My company is hiring now to replace people who took other opportunities in the area.
Tell us about GoDaddy, John!
…some inside dope or dirt.
Parsons is quite the promoter.
Burj Al Arab -World’s only seven star hotel
– Starling’s Digs
Whiskey: and it gets worse, for the redirection to the other groups (away from the white professional) creates no new wealth at the same time is siphons it away from the productive and creative.
BTW, I have always been a little skeptical about Google’s rise, particularly in the early phase of the firm. It has always had a very strong connection to the Democrat Party, this needs to be examined in detail. Were they not Democrats, they would have been hit by the anti-trust protection racket a long time ago. Their whole revenue model is advertising == this will meet with a great many obstacles in the years ahead. If they canot get a monopoly of some sort, they are in trouble. No wonder they want to be the contractors for the new socialist order. It is amazing how democrat do not even think that they are corrupt. Thing is,they are not the source of broad based innovation that say Bell Labs once was.
Google and the like is hardly a replacement for the old tech establishment. But liberals love it because it is so “elite”.
Unlike Obama, Clinton understood what you have outlined. Remember the 1990′s tech economy, they one that the MSM breathlessly told us “transcended the business cycle”? Boom years for techies. All were on board the boom (and the con).
They will try this with “green tech” but it has no market basis and will just be a big corrupt money pump. It does not offer the broad base for advancement as did the tech revolution, but they will try to pass it off anyway. It will make the tech bubble of the late 90′s look like a small burp. It is what would have happened if gore would have had his way with his “information highway” garbage.
Where this is all leading is anyone’s guess — certainly Obama and Co. are clueless.
It will not work out as the Democrats imagine. Their arrogance this time around is unbelievable. Even FDR did not make war on the majority.
As the white “knowledge workers” hit the edge of the recession/depression, it will start to fray. There is no way to subsidize those sort of jobs at that level for that amount of people, and the expectations will not be “lowered”.
Obama seeks to destroy the tax base he requires. This is the central flaw of his thought. It is the flaw of socialism in general, of course, but when you add is anti-white male animus the contradictions are self defeating in the extreme.
There is also so slf deception that democrat policy cause all the growth in the 1990′s, rather than the legacy of Reagan. They are wrong here. They do not have the base to grwo that from. So it will screwup.
Err… Doug… how could I tell u about GoDaddy. I’m just a customer of theirs.
Just thought you might know:
He is based in Phoenix, right?
Desert Rat said he started on some friends non-code property, or some such.
Doug… I think he is. There are a bunch of web outfits here.
How much is electricity there?
Google pays 6c/kw in Oregon!
I don’t know the business rate. We have the country’s largest nuke plant here, but a lot of it goes (grrr) to California.
Net neutrality will have a similar effect on the internet to that which the “Fairness” doctrine would have on radio. It needs to be fought against by any and all means.
By allowing Democrat shills with lots of money in at the beginning when basic rules are laid down, it could be the end for any sort of truly free internet expression of ideas.
My wife purchased a dvd movie called Sartup (as bes as I can remember). It shows the arrogance of the computer class especially in Silicon Valley.
Google has laid off its contractors. Yes their business model is advertising in the mode they use when someone googles something. But we are so inundated with ads that I am skeptical that they will continue to earn the revenues they have been getting.
Many IT types are anarchist/Libertarians. Many tend to be technically paranoid. The open source fanatics do not want people to have to purchase software.
If the O give Google a monopoly there will be screaming and yelling by these types. the telcoms are trying to stop indepenent VOIP’s like Skype.
It was easy for RCA working with the old AT&Tto set up network oligopolies and monopolies using the false economic theory of natural monopolies. Now it is harder plus the O team is geared to the pay for play corruption of Chicago and New York.
The IT folks see themselves as a Creative Class. Wall Street and the Green Power gangs are more like ADM and the RIAA.
I really dont see how alot of the advertising models work in the long run, I use Gmail and it has ads but I dont see them. Same with most sites, top bar, side bar, etc, I dont look at any of them.
Vivictius,
Merely looking at a page that contains ads is an “impression”, whether you ignore it or “click-thru” it. Impressions count.