{"id":25132,"date":"2017-09-01T18:23:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T23:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25132"},"modified":"2017-09-01T18:23:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T23:23:47","slug":"yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesnt-like-i-know-because-it-happened-to-me-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25132","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn\u2019t Like\u2014I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn\u2019t Like\u2014I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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llustration: Jim Cooke\/GMG, photo: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The story in the New York Times<\/em> this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars<\/a>, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was \u201cimperiling the institution,\u201d the Times<\/em> reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance.<\/p>\n

The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank\u2019s website \u201capplauding<\/a>\u201d the European Commission\u2019s decision to slap the company with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine for privileging its price-comparison service over others in search results. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon afterward, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by \u201cinstitutional norms of transparency and collegiality<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Google denied any role in Lynn\u2019s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the \u201cfacts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.\u201d Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google\u2019s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I was working for Forbes<\/em> at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google\u2019s then-new social network, Plus.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn\u2019t Like\u2014I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated] llustration: Jim Cooke\/GMG, photo: Getty The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2682,7921,378,15833,5664,15834,1921,15829],"class_list":["post-25132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-abuse-of-power","tag-forbes","tag-google","tag-kashmir-hill","tag-monopoly","tag-new-america-foundation","tag-new-york-times","tag-open-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25133,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25132\/revisions\/25133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}