Yesterday I saw an article in favor of the CLOUD Act, which has received support from Google. Given that almost every other article suggests it's bad for privacy and human rights, and these folks were saying the opposite, I checked, and sure enough, both authors' employers were listed here: https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html
Of course, given that this page is for "U.S. Public Policy", my guess is that organizations fully arranged and supported in the EU can be left off the list. Sure enough, if you look for a handful of the organizations mentioned in this report, none of them are disclosed on Google's site.
EDIT: Note that not every organization on the list is inherently "bad", many don't involve competition or Internet policy at all. One in particular, the EFF, of course, has continued to argue against Google's positions, including a massive condemnation of the CLOUD Act. (And even directly taking Google to task with an FTC complaint about school Chromebooks violating student privacy.)
But almost every article in support of Google's goals comes from a writer who is employed by one of the organizations on this list, which makes those on it, suspect until demonstrated otherwise.
True, but neither of them pump the level of money into convincing academics to covertly promote their political agendas as your employer does.
Whereas Apple and Microsoft will settle for a trade organization that openly represents them to state their views on the topic, Google's got professors who aren't disclosing their financial interests involved.
This is about what a reasonable person would expect from Google.
Also concerning is that one of YouTube's primary stated goals this year is to tighten their content control. At first, it will likely be used for preventing content most objectionable to their advertisers and their leadership. Over time, it will almost inevitably morph into a system that distorts the worldwide flow of information to privilege Google's interests. It may not even be intentional, depending on how much ML is involved.
The problem: that a wealthy, often newly-emerged, corporate powerhouse funds "research" baldly in its own interests, isn't new. See Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, the military-industrial complex, Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the auto industry in the 1950s-70s. Standard Oil and the funding of the University of Chicago with its famously pro-monopolist economics department.
Fat lot of good it did 'em; they still have to comply with right-to-be-forgotten requests.
Meanwhile lots of EU users still deeply distrust Google and expect their respective governments to reach across sovereign borders for enforcement (ignoring the GDPR controversies for now) - if their motivations really are as bad as this article implies (and it is certainly plausible to this humble poster), they sure wasted a lot of time/money.
Of course, given that this page is for "U.S. Public Policy", my guess is that organizations fully arranged and supported in the EU can be left off the list. Sure enough, if you look for a handful of the organizations mentioned in this report, none of them are disclosed on Google's site.
EDIT: Note that not every organization on the list is inherently "bad", many don't involve competition or Internet policy at all. One in particular, the EFF, of course, has continued to argue against Google's positions, including a massive condemnation of the CLOUD Act. (And even directly taking Google to task with an FTC complaint about school Chromebooks violating student privacy.)
But almost every article in support of Google's goals comes from a writer who is employed by one of the organizations on this list, which makes those on it, suspect until demonstrated otherwise.