
Google is coming after critics in academia and journalism - thedays
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/30/zephyr-teachout-google-is-coming-after-critics-in-academia-and-journalism-its-time-to-stop-them/
======
bhouston
Can the Washington Post get away with significant original criticism or
investigations of Amazon?

A medium sized think tank corrupted for a megacorp isn't as bad as the major
government focused newspaper, the only newspaper bigger is the nytimes.

But I guess if the choice of jb owning wp or having wp go bankrupt and go
away, I would choose wp being owned by jb. Journalism is important to keep
around.

~~~
kyleschiller
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=amazon&utm_...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=amazon&utm_term=.90f7c49018b4&sort=Relevance&datefilter=All%20Since%202005&spellcheck&startat=0#top)

Lots of press, most of it good, couple harsher criticisms:

Why this group is trying to stop Amazon from buying Whole Foods
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/why-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/why-
this-group-is-trying-to-stop-amazon-from-buying-whole-
foods/?utm_term=.306e75b1d628)

Amazon under probe for business in Iran
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/amazon-
under...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/amazon-under-probe-
for-business-in-iran-arbitration-rule-avoids-
suspension/2017/07/31/227998ec-7616-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.026fd94132ab)

Is Amazon getting too big? [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-
getting-to...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-too-
big/2017/07/28/ff38b9ca-722e-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?utm_term=.7dc7a88d80b3)

But yeah, overall hard to tell if this is genuine or just there to make WaPo
appear less biased.

~~~
bhouston
Jb would never police wp on a daily basis. It isn't worth his time and all but
one is just simple reporting. There is only one oped that is fairly weak in
it's take on Amazon's monopoly. None of these are real risks to his business.

Could the whole wp editorial board run a blind oped calling for the government
to breakup Amazon's monopoly as the paper's official position?

As Amazon grows the threat of antitrust will probably get real and the center
of that threat is Washington DC.

------
bllguo
Like I commented elsewhere - why is this evil? Because Google didn't want to
pay its own critics? Open Markets is free, as they themselves admit, to
continue their work elsewhere. They are not entitled to Google's support.

~~~
maxander
It's not as if Open Markets were a bunch of Google employees. If some rich guy
calls up your employer and leans on them so that they fire you, you're still
"free to continue your work elsewhere," but you would still be pretty upset.
That's exactly what happened to these guys.

Big companies controlling think tanks is, of course, nothing new. But we tend
to hold tech icons like Google to a higher standard, and trust them much
further, than we do with oil companies or banks.

~~~
uoaei
> But we tend to hold tech icons like Google to a higher standard, and trust
> them much further, than we do with oil companies or banks.

We have to if we want to overcome the cognitive dissonance involved with
trusting them with our data in the face of such news as that linked above. If
we can't trust them to play nice on this, how can we expect them to protect
our privacy from snoops?

