He has few connections to Chicago or Cambridge. Nonetheless, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google Inc., has emerged as one of the big winners of the 2008 presidential election.
Only three months ago, the Internet giant was about to be sued by the U.S Justice Department as a web search monopolist. Despite its outsized role on the Internet, the Mountain View, CA, company was a bit player in the nation’s capital. It had hired its first full-time Washington staffer only three years ago; its political action committee dates just to fall, 2006.
Now, the company shows all the signs of having arrived as a Beltway power player, report Jim Puzzanghera and Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles Times. Schmidt not only backed Obama (he said his support was personal, and the company was neutral), but he joined him on the campaign trail, while his employees turned out to be among Obama’s most generous contributors. Only the people at DreamWorks gave more money for the inauguration, the Times notes.
A symbol of the company’s rite of passage was its glitzy inauguration bash. The event was packed with celebrities, including Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba and Glenn Close. Though Obama did not make an appearance, the event drew influential political figures such as Obama transition chief John Podesta and Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
Schmidt and Google.org global development director Sonal Shah both served on the Obama-Biden transition team.
Now, they are well-positioned to push the company’s agenda of expanding high-speed Internet access so more people can use their services, and ensuring net neutrality by barring telecommunications companies from charging websites for faster content delivery.
“Google is not just a benign corporate entity. It has a variety of special interests,” Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told the Los Angeles Times. “They’re in a great position to push their agenda through with the support of the president and the Democrats in Congress.”
If competitors are worried, Google execs downplay their newfound influence. They note that Obama’s priorities mirrored the company’s from the start. The president has endorsed network neutrality, for instance. And his technology agenda calls for expanding broadband Internet access and appointing the first chief technology officer (Schmidt has been mentioned for the position, but repeated this week that he was not interested).
Google’s spokesman in Washington, Adam Kovacevich, told the Times that despite Schmidt’s personal support for Obama, the company takes a two-party approach.
“We know that the incoming administration supports a lot of things that we like,” he said. “But we also know you cannot get anything done here unless you have relationships on both sides of the aisle.”
The company’s political action committee gave 57% of its $264,000 in contributions during the 2008 campaign cycle to Democrats, and 43% to Republicans. Google also had a presence at both parties’ national conventions last summer.
But the makeup of the company’s senior Washington advisers is telling. They include former Vice President Al Gore, former Clinton foreign policy aide Robert Boorstin, and Alan Davidson, who had served for eight years as associate director of the Centre for Democracy and Technology, a think tank that opposes government and industry control of the web.
It looks like Microsoft is not the only company that can play this game.
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