Not directly related but I have a theory that Google has shaped public opinion online - and been very good at it- in a couple of instances when there was a risk

Not directly related but I have a theory that Google has shaped public opinion online - and been very good at it- in a couple of instances when there was a risk to their business. The first was net neutrality, where you found various think tanks doing stuff like YouTube explaining why it’s bad to lose net neutrality. Once I dug into who was funding one of those think tanks and it looked a lot like Google. Given the % of bandwidth that is people watching YouTube, Google had potentially some big bills coming their way with the loss of net neutrality. The other one is Kevin Rudd in Australia taking on Rupert Murdoch while Google is at risk of having to share ad revenue on news with NewsCorp. I haven’t researched this much but the question is simply who’s funding Kevin Rudd to fight Murdoch.