Earlier this month we highlighted how Google was under fire for funding the lobbyist organization ALEC, a group that helps companies submit draft legislation that then gets lobbied into law. These efforts by and large are anti-consumer, with ALEC opposing network neutrality and supporting blockades on municipal broadband.
Criticism of Google's support of ALEC highlights a larger issue of Google hypocrisy on net neutrality that has been
evident since around 2010 or so, when Google worked with AT&T and Verizon to craft flimsy net neutrality rules that were riddled with loopholes, and failed to even address wireless networks.It appears to have been ALEC's climate change denialism, not these key broadband issues, that has since pressured Google to back away from the group. Google says they'll
no longer be funding ALEC as of the end of the year, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt calling the group "liars" who are harming future generations:
quote:
“The people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place,” Schmidt said on NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” yesterday. “We should not be aligned with such people. They are just literally lying.”
Microsoft backed away from the group earlier this year for, in part, "fighting policies that promote renewable energy." ALEC called Google's departure from the group "unfortunate":
quote:
“It is unfortunate to learn Google has ended its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council as a result of public pressure from left-leaning individuals and organizations who intentionally confuse free market policy perspectives for climate change denial,” Lisa Nelson, ALEC’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Backing away from ALEC took Google more than a year; the company's funding of the secretive organization was exposed in a
Daily Beast report from August of 2013, which noted Google original joined to fight SLAPP lawsuits (and stuck around for general anti-consumer fun, apparently). While Google was funding ALEC's efforts to crush neutrality and municipal broadband with one hand, they were also funding groups like the Internet Association and their support of those same issues with the other.