Google, in Post-Obama Era, Aggressively Woos Republicans – The New York Times (Jan 27, 2017)
Two politics stories today, as this one follows the Facebook story from earlier. This one also echoes an earlier story about big tech companies rethinking their political alliances both in the face of a possible shift to the right and now in the wake of an actual take over of both the executive and legislative branches by Republicans. It’s easy to see this as a swing from left to right, but I think it’s better seen as pragmatism about working with whoever is in power. The wrinkle is that Google had particularly strong ties with the Obama administration at multiple levels, and Eric Schmidt in particular was involved with the Clinton campaign, at least indirectly. Google / Alphabet arguably has the most to fear of the major tech companies from a backlash against tech companies based on their support for Democrats, and is clearly doing all it can to make nice now. Having said all that, the degree to which companies have to worry about such a backlash is surely much higher under this administration than any previous one.
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