Google secretly staged academic conferences to influence antitrust regulators

Evidence

The Washington Post published an elaborate exposé of Google’s meticulous work in this fourth domain, illustrated in the backstage intrigues that accompanied a three-part series on internet search competition held at George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center, a “free-market–oriented” academic center that had received significant funding from Google. The meetings occurred in May 2012, just as the FTC was investigating the Google antitrust case. Reporters found that company staffers worked closely with the center, choosing pro-Google speakers and participants, many of whom were Google employees. Their efforts included “sending the center’s staff a detailed spreadsheet listing members of Congress, FTC commissioners, and senior officials with the Justice Department and state attorney general’s office.” Reporters noted that the conference’s panels were dominated by “leading technology and legal experts” who forcefully rejected the need for government action against Google, “making their arguments before some of the very regulators who would help determine its fate.” Many participants had no idea that Google was involved in crafting the meetings because Google and center staffers had agreed to conceal the corporation’s backstage involvement. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 402

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete instance of the ‘fortifications’ theme—corporate capture of the knowledge-production sphere. Also parallels how reputation systems in the Milgrom reading can be engineered rather than organic. — connects to: Google responds to resistance with staged superficial compliance rather than genuine reform — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 441; Industries used proxy institutes to secretly fund biased research
• SEED: Article angle on how academic conferences and ‘independent’ think-tank panels function as covert lobbying vehicles—the staged-regulator audience being the key mechanism.

Broader Connections

• Industries used proxy institutes to secretly fund biased research #exemplifies (0.88)
• Google responds to resistance with staged superficial compliance rather than genuine reform #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 441