Obama: Google’s Friend

Pierre Omidyar, an Iranian-American and founder of eBay, is a philanthropist who supports the creation of content in the digital world, such as the electronic magazine The Intercept.

The Intercept, which began to be known through the documents published by Edward Snowden, has been winning readership and influence thanks to the seriousness of its reviews and investigations on various themes that have to do with the environment, government transparency and freedom of expression.

A few days ago, The Intercept published a report about the close relationship between President Obama’s administration and Google, which is far closer than with any other businesses in Silicon Valley, where the president and Democratic Party have beneficial connections.

According to the publication, thanks to the revolving door, the White House and Google share engineers, lawyers, scientists, and specialists in communication, which has allowed this company to obtain huge advantages over competitors.

Today, hundreds of millions of people in the world live much more comfortably thanks to Google. Precisely because of overwhelming acceptance of the products and services it offers — a lot of times for free — public opinion in America has been kind to the company’s closeness to the government, which is especially valuable now that Google faces investigations for anti-competition practices and the lack of protection of personal data before the authorities of the European Union. The U.S. government is not going to let Google get hit and have it no longer be one of its banners and symbols of power worldwide.

Before it was weapons and oil dealers who owned the game, especially during Republican administrations in the past; now, it is the technology industry’s turn.

In all of the countries, regulators, in degrees big and small, are biased in favoring some and being against others. This “capture of the regulator” — sometimes shameless and other times imperceptible — is the reason behind the lobby industry.

These days in Colombia, they are talking about creating new rules on how to confront the audiovisual convergence and how to reform or eliminate existing entities. What is serious is the damage they are able to do while they disappear.