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Oracle’s has planted negative stories as part of its war against Google
- cromwellian 9y agoOne often wonders why Google massively ramped up lobbying in recent years, the primary reason seems to be attempted regulatory capture by Oracle and Microsoft astro-turfing, shills, and funded industry groups, much of this going on at the same time Oracle and Microsoft were engaged in highly litigious campaigns against open source and waging offensive patent cases or in Microsoft's case, straight up shakedowns of Android OEMs. The ISPs and Media companies were also engaged in shennanigans (https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7417891/google-condemns-sony-project-goliath https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7417891/google-condemns-...) So when you see a State Attorney General in the middle of a fly over state suddenly become a warrior and white knight on a specific issue, you might want to wonder who's paying. And yes, Google has paid people to write favorable articles on things like copyright or search algorithm freedom, but ask yourself, what's worse, Oracle copyrighting APIs, the old MS going after Linux and open source and patent trolling, or Hollywood aggressively cracking down on the web, or Google arguing it should have the right to tweak it's ranking algorithms on its own sites. One group is arguing to impose restrictions on other people with collateral damage all around, the other is arguing for greater freedom for itself. It's self serving, but I think freedom to innovate and avoid heavy handed regulation and online censorship is a different animal than those rent-seeking.