Monday, June 18, 2007 at 7:09 AM
At the beginning of 2005, I was Google’s lone public policy guy. Today, there’s a bigger – and growing – team of us scattered around the world, working on issues like privacy, child online safety, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, reform of the patent system, and broadband policy. These issues are fundamental to the future of the Internet (and of the individuals it empowers), and are increasingly prominent on the agendas of policymakers worldwide.
We’re seeking to do public policy advocacy in a Googley way. Yes, we’re a multinational corporation that argues for our positions before officials, legislators, and opinion leaders. At the same time, we want our users to be part of the effort, to know what we’re saying and why, and to help us refine and improve our policy positions and advocacy strategies. With input and ideas from our users, we’ll surely do a better job of fighting for our common interests.
This blog is part of the dialogue we’re hoping to foster.
You may be wondering why it contains two months’ worth of posts, given that we’re only just now launching. Well, we started the blog internally back in April, to limber up our blogging muscles. Now that we’ve gone public we thought it’d be fun to share our earlier internal posts. In the weeks and months ahead, expect to hear more from us on issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, and trade, just to name a few. All of the members of Google’s global public policy team will be contributing posts (or else – right, team?).
We hope this blog will serve as a resource for policymakers around the world — including legislators, ministers, governors, city councilmembers, regulators, and the staffers who support them — who are trying to enact sound government policies to foster free expression, promote economic growth, expand access to information, enable innovation, and protect consumers. We also hope (cliché alert) that this blog will promote real conversation, so we’ve enabled comments.
One Comment
I am glad for the comments section here. There seems to be something that Google doesn’t understand about the blogging spirit–it’s not supposed to be 100% one-way. When I heard sometime ago that Alan Davidson was going to head up a public policy office for Google in DC, it scared me. I understand how an idea like this could originate in the boardroom, but I am surprised the two founders let it materialize. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Google’s search engine, but their present vertical integration scheme and army of lobbyist, coupled with information available on the “real” Google culture (compliments of the book Search) makes we want to look elsewhere to search. Yahoo’s search results are as good as Google’s lately, and Ask seems to be improving considerably, especially in innovative interfaces. I am certainly not the first to say it, but it would seem that Google is quickly becoming the new Microsoft. It was fun while it lasted. BTW: the light gray text on light gray background makes it very difficult for me to type this comment, or maybe that’s the whole idea.
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