Mr. Doepfner seems to fear Google's power. As a newspaper publisher, that is reasonable. But in a wider societal context, as he seems to be implying, it is nonsense. Google has so little political influence that the city council won't let them build a twenty-foot bridge over a creek between two Google office buildings (http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/04/17/money-doesnt-matter...).
Maybe at the local level that's true, but at the Federal level, this is changing. Google used to be very politically uninvolved, but they did a 180 on that a few years back and started aggressively building a strong lobbying arm a few years back [1], hiring a high-profile ex-Congresswoman, Susan Molinari, to head it up [2]. This operation has grown to the point where in 2013 Google hit #8 on the list of corporations that spend the most lobbying Congress [3], with lobbying outlays greater than those of Comcast and Lockheed.
If you had as much money, would you not also spend some of it on lobbying?
I believe Google's actions were defensive in nature. I despise our politicians who will take "contributions" and ignore the people who elected them; still, if I had that much money I'd probably be lobbying too.
