The bigger issue is that people have this mistaken impression that think-tanks are independent academic institutions. They're not. They're private organizatio

The bigger issue is that people have this mistaken impression that think-tanks are independent academic institutions. They're not. They're private organizations that corporations go to and pay them to write a research paper that aligns with their corporate interests. That's what think-tanks are. That's their business model. They're not academia. Google is this think-tank's customer. And when it fired the guy, the think-tank is basically making themselves more customer-friendly. Calling them "evil" is like calling a customer "evil".