Google and Democrats deny that Google is helping Democrats
Yes, I'm doubling down.
The question isn’t whether Google collaborates with Democrats, but how Google collaborates with Democrats.
We know that Obama campaign manager Jim Messina received personal mentoring on both technology approaches and management style from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, his friend since the 2008 campaign. We know that Google employees overwhelmingly contributed to Democrats in the last cycle (and aggregate individual employee contributions outnumbered the company’s PAC contributions). We know that Google vice president and “chief Internet evangelist” Vint Cerf received a presidential appointment to the National Science Board following last year’s election.
Is it paranoid to believe that Google is deeply invested in helping Democrats? No.
Still, I decided to take a deeper look at the connections between Google and the Obama campaign.
Jim Messina called on Google’s Eric Schmidt, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Hollywood’s Steven Spielberg for their advice on building an organization. Schmidt gave Messina what turned out to be an invaluable piece of advice:
Yes, I'm doubling down.
The question isn’t whether Google collaborates with Democrats, but how Google collaborates with Democrats.
We know that Obama campaign manager Jim Messina received personal mentoring on both technology approaches and management style from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, his friend since the 2008 campaign. We know that Google employees overwhelmingly contributed to Democrats in the last cycle (and aggregate individual employee contributions outnumbered the company’s PAC contributions). We know that Google vice president and “chief Internet evangelist” Vint Cerf received a presidential appointment to the National Science Board following last year’s election.
Is it paranoid to believe that Google is deeply invested in helping Democrats? No.
Still, I decided to take a deeper look at the connections between Google and the Obama campaign.
Jim Messina called on Google’s Eric Schmidt, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Hollywood’s Steven Spielberg for their advice on building an organization. Schmidt gave Messina what turned out to be an invaluable piece of advice:
Messina said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt gave him simple advice: “You do not want political people, you want smart people who you are going to draw what you want and they’re going to go build it.” So Messina went out and hired someone to head the data department who had never worked on a campaign before.