The director of policy and government affairs at American Principles Project has unleashed a column suggesting Google may have influenced the 2020 presidential election in the hope of making a lot of money from a Joe Biden presidency.
Jon Schweppe explained in a commentary at the Daily Caller News Foundation that one of the components of Biden’s spending plans includes $350 billion to be used by cities and states that propose broadband and other infrastructure projects.
But those governmental projects have been tried in the past, and often have failed, opening the door for Google to cash in.
So, Schweppe explained, “With so much money flowing, and so much preference for government-run networks from the Biden administration, you can bet that Google will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces when a city-run network fails.”
He explained that Google previously attempted a “Google Fiber” effort, to build fiber optic networks. But it’s actually been completed in only a few locations.
And Schweppe noted, “It’s no secret that Big Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google wanted Joe Biden to win the election — and they were surely willing to use their unprecedented corporate power to help make it happen. While their most infamous contribution to the Biden campaign’s success may have been Facebook and Twitter’s censorship and throttling of the New York Post’s exposé on the Biden family’s shady business dealings, Google was arguably the most zealous and effective in putting a Democrat in the White House.”
He noted that Robert Epstein, a behavioral scientist with a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, “suggested that Google may have swung 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 due solely to its biased search results. And while that wasn’t enough in 2016 to stop a Trump win, the search giant only amped up its efforts in the intervening years before the 2020 election.”
Its internet influence, and “ability to shape public opinion,” clearly “amounts to election interference,” he explained. “And it is hard to argue that it didn’t play a role in determining the election’s outcome. Epstein suggested Google swung millions of votes in 2016, but Joe Biden won by just 43,000 votes in 2020 when counting the margins in Wisconsin (20,700), Georgia (11,800), and Arizona (10,500). If just one third of one percent of voters in those states had switched their votes, Trump would be in the Oval Office right now.”
So the company’s agenda could have been just an “ideological” preference for Democrats, he said.
“But there is plenty of evidence that Google’s interest in the election outcome was also about business,” he explained.
That’s because Biden’s spending agenda “revives a Google dream,” as Axios explained.
When Google’s own fiber projects stalled, the company discovered it could take advantage of projects that governments start, and that fail.
For example, in Provo, Utah, where the city spent $39 million building a network that failed, Google bought it out for one dollar.
Google now runs the operation that was funded by taxpayers “who are still paying off the debt,” he explained.
Similar “sweetheart deals” have benefited Google, such as “$57 million work of infrastructure in Huntsville, Alabama,” and others.
He noted besides the $350 billion, there’s another $65 billion in a pending deal in Congress, and then “there’s the FCC, USDA, NTIA, and a slew of agencies and programs that spend money on broadband every year.”
“With so much money flowing, and so much preference for government-run networks from the Biden administration, you can bet that Google will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces when a city-run network fails,” he explained.
Already, Google is working on a deal in West Des Moines, Iowa, where taxpayers will pay $40 million – but the deal gives Google “exclusive rights” to the network.
“The naked corruption of giving Google favorable treatment and first-mover advantages in publicly funded infrastructure has earned the city a lawsuit from a broadband provider already operating in West Des Moines,” the column said.
“Is this a Quid Pro Joe? It sure looks like it.”
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