Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/peter-thiel-gave-money-to-attorney-general-going-after-google

by SirLJ • 9 years ago

118 102 9 years ago

c3534l• 9 years ago

Okay. That's not illegal and there's no evidence of bribery. My congressman also fought for net neutrality and I also gave him money. In fact, I gave him money because I wanted him to fight for net neutrality for me.

joshAg2• 9 years ago

You gave your congressman as significant an amount of money as theil did?!

geocar• 9 years ago

Isn't $300k like $500 to Peter Thiel?

mankash666• 9 years ago

There's plenty of behavior from Google that smacks of anti-trust. From not showing competitors products in search results (protonmail was the most prominent recent case) to locking out customers heavily reliant on Google, they've gotten rather "evil"

Having said that, I have zero confidence in politicians to make this right. If Google is evil, politicians are the spawns of Satan. Republicans probably have a bone to pick with Google given how left leaning googlers are. So this immediately transforms a anti trust issue into Democrats vs Republicans

cisanti• 9 years ago

The fact that your Republicans have bone to pick might turn out to be good for the whole world if they can stop Google.

sdenton4• 9 years ago

Republicans support big business, though, right?

(Having large successful businesses in blue states provides a well if funds they can transfer to the red states... As we see them doing with the current tax proposals.)

thephyber2• 9 years ago

A comment in another thread made an interesting point about this press release done by the Missouri AG. Generally AGs don't need to send out press releases to announce the beginning of an investigation if they already have evidence that will stick.

Google will probably end up hiring an expensive local law firm in Missouri and spend money on marketing to Missourians to improve its image. Without the AG's threat of a lawsuit, Google expenditures would probably largely avoid Missouri.

If this is true, the AG is playing at something that kinda smells like a legal form of racketeering, unless there is actually strong grounds to bring a anti-trust case.

redthrowaway• 9 years ago

Politicians support the businesses in their districts/states. Republicans are ideologically pro-corporate, viewing that stance as the best way to generate growth and jobs, but not many politicians are above getting a dig in at the other tribe.

The Republican base hates Silicon Valley with a passion. There's good political hay to be made by pretty much any Republican politician going after them. Imagine how popular going after gun manufacturers would be for the Democratic base, then imagine gun manufacturers were both insanely wealthy and powerful, and near universally loudly opposed to Democrats culturally. You don't really have to imagine the power of that; there's a reason Weinstein thought he could deflect the accusations against him by going after the NRA. Similar situation, but SV is far richer & more powerful than the NRA is.

Also, getting rid of SALT deductions isn't about "transferring funds to red states", it's about disincentivizing high state and local taxes.

rdtsc3• 9 years ago

Yes those who have money buy political favors in US.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/07/amid-antitrust-talk...

Google has 25 lobbying firms on retainer and spends at least $15M / year on lobbying. That is more than Verizon, Monsanto and Goldman for example, just to pick a few traditional big and scary companies off the top of my head.

Also speaking of Google, it has a pretty wide revolving door: "22 former White House officials moved into jobs at Google, while 31 Google executives took government jobs". It's not necessarily more un-evil or better than Monsanto for example, but many people still think of it as the cute little startup with fun colorful letters in the logo.

estsauver• 9 years ago

The way I've always heard is that Google was coming up while the DOJ was tearing into Microsoft for anti trust and so was very culturally aware of the impact that government can have on the success of a company.

maxerickson• 9 years ago

They took a decade to really get going with it.

See the chart midway through here:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/23/2968686/google-joins-lobb...

Before 2009 they weren't spending all that much. The company was flush with cash at least since the 2004 IPO.

3pt14159• 9 years ago

Monsanto is evil for tricking farmers or for unfair business practices, not for lobbying. This is a false equivalency. Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest and does not abuse those position as many companies of their size do.

kogepathic• 9 years ago

Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest and does not abuse those position as many companies of their size do.

Yes, they do that now.

What about in the future? There's no guarantee that they won't start lobbying for things which entrench their monopoly and help their business while harming consumers.

Just look at Google Fiber. At one point in time it seemed they might actually disrupt incumbent providers like Comcast, but they figured it wasn't in their interests and mothballed it.

PeachPlum• 9 years ago

11 Sep 2017 · Google today appealed the record €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion USD) antitrust fine levied against it by the EU

VeejayRampay3• 9 years ago

Amazing comment, you somehow manage to give Thiel excuses ("it's the way it is") and shift the topic to Google's lobbying at the same time.

rdtsc3• 9 years ago

Amazing comment

Thanks!

you somehow manage to give Thiel excuses

And what is he guilty of again?

and shift the topic to Google's lobbying

The article is about Google and lobbying, so pointing out what Google is doing is interesting.

Besides your complement and meta-comment what do you think about the article?

maxxxxx3• 9 years ago

I am always surprised how little money is really spent on lobbying. It really has an insane ROI.

rayiner5• 9 years ago

If lobbying had insane ROI, wouldn't companies spend more money on it?

martin_bech• 9 years ago

Nice to see billionaires doing good with their money.

katastic• 9 years ago

Bro managed to remove Gawker from the internet. It's already a better place.

Strange how people are demanding Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al "clean up their content" but when someone does it with a lawsuit, all a sudden these toxin spewing organizations are supposed to be the "underdogs"?

What's that? Oh, the world's smallest tear.

liamtk43• 9 years ago

Are we supposed to assume that by Thiel giving $300k to Hawley's political campaign in 2015, Thiel is behind Hawley's antitrust investigation into Google? Enough with the "click bate" titles and attenuated conclusions. Another article from a major news outlet that contains zero facts supporting its implied premise.

kibibu• 9 years ago

Did you miss him taking down Gawker by proxy? He has form in this space.

flexie3• 9 years ago

That would be a sound assumption.

Why else should a Silicon Valley billionaire give 300k to someone running for attorney general in a Missouri? Is he just interested in justice being pursued in a small Midwestern state he doesn't live in, that he is neither from, nor studied in, nor has his major business interests in?

$300,000 is a sizable donation for someone running for attorney general in a low key state.

ForHackernews4• 9 years ago

$300,000 is a sizable donation

According to Forbes' estimates, Thiel is worth about $2.8 billion. Donating $300,000 for him is proportional to giving maybe $30 for a normal upper-middle class person.

CodeWriter232• 9 years ago

EU Courts already found Google guilty of antitrust activities. So the sound assumption here is US Courts will rule similarly. So why would a State AG pass on such an opportunity to fill the state coffers and defend their citizens? Check out followthemoney.org to learn why California isn’t filing the suit.

thephyber2• 9 years ago

Did you purposefully misspell "clickbait"?

Also, even if there is no connection, it doesn't seem "clickbait"y. The article is probably drawing a tenuous connection, but it seems straightforward in it's attempt.

slowmotiony• 9 years ago

Clearly Thiel is not important enough and has to use the old school way of lobbying - by sending massive amounts of cash through shady lobbying groups.

If he was more important, he could simply call the president like Zuck: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/13/mark-z...

stonewhite• 9 years ago

A rant tangential to original submission but, articles like you linked always push me to the edge. A supposedly tech journalist throwing around redundant requests.

a) Facebook Pro doesn’t track me;
b) Facebook Pro stores zero data about me; and
c) Facebook Pro uses encryption in every possible way.

b makes a redundant, and c is already there. Also the personalization is the product itself, so storing "zero data" also breaks the product.

Want to see an unpersonalized timeline looks like? Go check twitter. From the beginning, the timeline view (or whatever it is called) was unusable and most of all: irrelevant.

People want to be on the Facebook because everybody is there, but for some reason people also want to get rid of core feature how it keeps all its users on board and active. Just don't use it if you are that bothered. (I don't)

tryingagainbro4• 9 years ago

America! Give $1000 to a Congressman and you buy what money in the real world cannot.

In other countries corruption is more honest: want the license to build a building? It will cost you an apartment or $XX,XXX. Personally, I prefer the later...

downandout4• 9 years ago

While this headline is factual, this is like saying "Man With Pre-Existing Health Conditions Donated to the Obama Campaign, and Now We Have Obamacare". People shop for candidates that will serve their interests and then try to help get them elected. That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The article strives to imply that Thiel paid this guy off to bring the action, but provides no factual basis for such a conclusion. He apparently sought out a candidate that shared his point of view on Google, and donated to him. It's as simple as that. This article really is nothing more than drivel intended to further impune the reputation of a man hated by liberals for his support of Donald Trump. It's no coincidence that it appears in Bloomberg, which happens to be owned by one of the most liberal people on planet earth. I can't stand political propaganda masquerading as legitimate news - on the left or right - but that seems to be all we are exposed to these days.

wavefunction2• 9 years ago

I disagree with your notion that some hypothetical person with health issues donating $100,000 to the Obama campaign is anywhere in the same moral and ethical situation being discussed here.

In fact it sounds like quite an empty equivalency.

naturalgradient• 9 years ago

Do you have an argument other than that it feels wrong to you? Some people feel deeply about net neutrality and the state of society.

ravingraven2• 9 years ago

While this headline is factual, this is like saying "Man With Pre-Existing Health Conditions Donated to the Obama Campaign, and Now We Have Obamacare".

And what you are saying is like saying "a pebble fell into the ocean and a boulder fell into the ocean and it's the same because they both produced waves".

Donations from the 1% are many orders of magnitude bigger than donations from ordinary folks mainly because ordinary folks live paycheck to paycheck and do not have the time or resources to donate.

The leverage a big corporations have over politicians is enormous. IMHO they should have zero leverage (no vote, no influence).

downandout4• 9 years ago

I suppose I should have put the amount in my headline. Let's say someone with the same amount to donate - $300K in this case - donated to Obama, because he wanted to support a candidate that would introduce legislation that would allow him to get health insurance despite several pre-existing conditions. Would you view that as wrong? You may, but it's certainly not illegal, and it's no different than what happened here.

Again, people shop for and donate to candidates that will serve their interests. If you want that to be illegal, write your representatives.

smhost2• 9 years ago

That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The system you described naturally consolidates power, and most of society finds it acceptable only if it coexists with a mechanism to redistribute some of that power to the underprivileged class. So there are some things wrong with it.

a man hated by liberals for his support of Donald Trump

Liberals hate him for his conservative views, not just for his support of Trump. As a PoC, it's hard not to feel disgust toward a powerful elite who says shit like: "...when you start looking for racism everywhere, and you start finding racism everywhere, it's only a very small step to finding racists everywhere. Now, there's nothing wrong if there are really racists out there, but I'm going to suggest to you that there really aren't." Textbook conservative gaslighting to downplay the prevalence of an issue that they find to be inconvenient.

natecavanaugh4• 9 years ago

Textbook conservative gaslighting to downplay the prevalence of an issue that they find to be inconvenient.

I think depending on your experiences, it may come off as gaslighting, but as a conservative (who loathes Trump and a lot of what Thiel champions), I can tell you that even the word racist is a heavy handed social weapon that has sometimes been used wrongly, or, and this is what triggers conservative anger, is when it's applied only to white people. So it comes off as intellectually dishonest in these types of discussions.

You may be thinking "oh Lord, cry me a river", but if everyone would cop to and own up for their own failings and work on that, things might ease a bit with regard to the tension of these discussions.

Also, you can't have diversity of experience when it's convenient, and uniformity of experience at the same time. What I mean is, if all or most PoC have experienced racism, why is it not ok to then label all PoC with the negative labels and experiences?

I've known many privileged PoC who demonstrate, if not full blown racism, then above average hostility and prejudice to not only other races, but even subgroups in their own ethnicity.

And I have known many white people who come from an underprivileged background who suffer from many of the same structural inequalities in the system because of their background and who they associate with.

I would agree with him that there really aren't many racists in the world in general, if we are defining racist as a person who consciously believes one race is superior to another.

But if we define it as people who have subconscious prejudices that influence their thinking of other cultures, ethnicities, races, etc., Then I would say that they are everywhere, including you and I.

But going with the latter definition is tricky, because humans are complex in that prejudices are overridden as often as they influence a decision. For instance, my former doctor was a somewhat older Asian lady, and she has a gigantic prejudice towards Russians and would say things like "Never adopt from Russia, the babies parents have so many drinking problems. The baby will have too many problems". However, having had her for many years, I can say that if a Russian, baby or not were to go to her for help, she would provide the same level of care she would give anyone else. Her prejudices may influence her initial thinking, but these sorts of things, if people are honest with themselves, are quickly overridden.

Again, I'm not saying there aren't racists and that there aren't institutional issues that stem from it, I'm saying that it's frustrating that it's often ignored when PoC exhibit the same behavior, and that it happens when the environment is setup to favor PoC and the white person is the one at the disadvantage.

So all that to say, I don't think it's inconvenient for conservatives or whites to have the discussion, it's just very often overly emotional on both sides and incredibly frustrating at times.

jrs953• 9 years ago

most of society finds it acceptable only if it coexists with a mechanism to redistribute some of that power to the underprivileged class

That mechanism exists. It's called voting. The problem mostly lies with how difficult it is to get underprivileged people to turn out and vote. Of course there are also voter suppression efforts, but those mostly amount to a 'nudge' to make it a little more difficult so less people turn out. It's a much smaller overall effect than general voter apathy. That's part of why Democrats were able to have so much success this year -- anti-Trump sentiment seems to have gotten their voters to turn out in an off year when they didn't used to.

mrpopo• 9 years ago

That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that.

For most of the world population, wealthy people buying off politicians to serve their interests is seen as unethical, and it is flat illegal in many countries.

adventured• 9 years ago

There is no country in the developed world where politicians aren't constantly bribed, pandered to, influenced via wealth & power from the private sector, and so on.

There are no exceptions. Routine scandals - only the things that get caught - over the last three or four decades, from Canada to France to Western Europe to Australia to South Korea to China to Japan prove this point dramatically.

CPLX• 9 years ago

If you think a Republican politician and billionaire financier is one of the most liberal people on earth you have a truly profound misunderstanding of what that word means.

downandout4• 9 years ago

He was a Republican 17 years ago when it was politically convenient, then he renounced his party membership. He was a big Hillary supporter in the last election. He's also too liberal even for mainstream Democrats today, which is why he was considering a presidential run as an independent (and ultimately didn't, because he would have simply split the Democratic vote and taken exactly 0 votes from Trump). You should examine some of his positions on things, I think you'd find that you have a "profound misunderstanding" of his political views if you believe he's a Republican.

briandear• 9 years ago

Agreed:

Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna gave $20 million to boost Clinton and other Democratic campaigns.

Reid Hoffman gave 40,000 to Democrats in 2016.

Sheryl Sandberg of contributed over $200,000 to Democratic electoral campaigns in 2016.

Marc Benioff has previously put more than $100,000 toward Democratic election funds.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has spent more than $10,000 to support the Democratic ticket in 2016.

Elon Musk has also contributed to Democratic campaign funds — which was vital as much of his business depends on government contracting, subsidy and tax credits.

John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers had donated more than $600,000 to Clinton-related super PACs, and Brook Byers of the same firm has donated more than $100,000 to Democrat campaign funds.

So WHY IS THIS A STORY? Because apparently Peter Thiel prefers to support causes he prefers which aren’t necessarily the causes that Bloomberg et al support. Peter was acting perfectly legally. We can debate the merits of the system, but Thiel didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy here.

gadders• 9 years ago

And Sam Altan as well: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-sam-altman-2017071...

Jyaif3• 9 years ago

When you are responsible for a majority of the donation of an entity, you pretty much own that entity, i.e. that entity will do whatever you please.

None of the donators you mentioned own the entities they donated to. Thiel owns that attorney.

briholt2• 9 years ago

Theil is becoming the liberal media's George Soros - the enigmatic billionaire pulling the strings of his evil conservative conspiracy.

ZeroGravitas6• 9 years ago

Well, Soros does, in actual reality, fund and support the promotion of democracy and this has made him enemies amongst those who don't like that kind of thing.

Theil and some of his buddies are on record as thinking that democracy is holding their libertarian dreams back, that it's incompatible with capitalism. And that generates pushback from those that prefer democracy.

So, they do seem very neat opposites, but no need to assume it's all based on fairytales.

0xbear3• 9 years ago

It’s only fair. Google goes after conservatives, conservatives go after Google. Don’t want your fortunes to depend on politics? Easy solution: stay out of politics. Be neutral and above the fray, declare political discourse (all of it, not just conservative points of view) socially unacceptable at work.

ZeroGravitas6• 9 years ago

Is there any real evidence of Google going after conservatives?

Is it not just a result of the fact that younger and better educated people are less likely to be conservative that gives this impression?

0xbear3• 9 years ago

Google is very “Chinese Revolution” on the inside. You can totally have negative career and social consequences for being public at work about your conservative viewpoints and voting preferences. At the same time you can have positive consequences for signaling virtue to liberals. You could say “that’s not Google” doing this, but the thing is, Google totally supports, condones, and encourages this behavior.

But those are internal affairs, so you might argue this is irrelevant. But recently this attitude slipped outside with YouTube demonetization of conservative commentators, forced de-trending of popular conservative videos and forced trending of liberal ones?

If you want to play this ball, expect defense to get involved.

tomohawk• 9 years ago

Soros is way scarier the way he is buying up district attorneys.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/george-soros-continues-quietl...

ratsimihah• 9 years ago

unveiled a probe into Alphabet Inc.’s Google for favoring its own products in search results

Is there something inherently wrong with that? I understand it's annoying, but Google is a business after all, not a charity.

Not showing competing results could be considered evil, but merely favoring their own products seems fair to me.

Then again every product I've been building never took off, so what do I know?

tzury• 9 years ago

This headline has not been phrased with honesty nor dignity.

Donated to a Campaign vs Gave Money to a person.

Donated to a campaign in Jan. Google suite filed mid November.

Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google

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