Here is an interesting post from The Daily Mail UK looking at the number of times Google officials have visited the White House and what roles offcials from the Obama administration and Google have played in each other's organization. Worry? Folks were worried about oil and anti-global warming guys and the revolving door at the Bush White House, perhaps, we should be concerned about the same for the Obama years as well as it relates to trade, regulation, and privacy in the Internet.
Here are the quick, cold, and hard facts:
- Google have visited the White House more than 400 times and got 363 meetings. Some of those meetings are with the president himself.
- Executives from Google have gone on to work for the White House and Obama officials have gone on to likely more lucrative posts at Google.
- former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt have worked for the Obama campaign as well as the administration.
- Google's top lobbyist in Washington have spent more time at the White House than those from other lobbying firms.
- Some of the meetings coicided with investigations from the Federal Trade Commission as well as privacy matters.
Google did note that some of the meetings are for matters like science fairs. Even so, that is a lot of face time. So, for folks who were suspicious or even upset with the tight relationshipment between the Bush administration and the energy sectors, should be be concerned with Google and Obama being so tight?
I like to believe that Google officials and engineers would offer their expertise on matters of education, security, and privacy. And I'm sure that sort of exchange of infromation has occured but I'm sure Google's top lobbyist was not there for these kinds of discussions.
