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>The whole premise is a bit flawed - it's putting most of the blame on Google. The premise is that Eric Schmidt's displeasure lead to some people getting fired

• BeetleB 9y ago
  >The premise is that Eric Schmidt's displeasure lead to some people getting fired. I don't know how else you could make that argument without blaming Google when the entire argument is about blaming Google. I'm not saying Google is not culpable. I'm saying they're no more culpable than the folks at the think tank who are dependent on Google. If I run a business where I take in huge chunks of money from a company every year, and adjust my spending and budgets to rely on said money, then I stopped being independent. In the business world, no one would have any sympathy for me if the company I relied on suddenly decided to stop supporting me. I put myself into this hole. Why is it any different here? The think tank stopped being independent long before any of this happened. They are equal partners, and deserve an equal amount of blame. They are definitely not the victims here. The problem isn't that Google is making negative overtures to them with an implied threat of defunding them in the future. The problem is that they shouldn't have been funding them in the first place. As such, it can easily be argued that dropping funding is the right thing to do.