Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Obama, Schmidt, Mundie: The Fellowship of the Pings
Back in 2005, Google was represented in Washington by a lone staffer. The company’s political innocence was something of a joke among seasoned beltway players and it didn’t much seem to care. Google was far too busy organizing the world’s information to pay attention to Washington.
How quickly things changed. By 2007, the company’s Washington lobbyists numbered about 12. And now, two years later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been named by President Obama to his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
“Google abandoned [its deal with Yahoo] not because pressing ahead with it ‘risked’ a protracted legal battle, but because it guaranteed one.” I wrote that on Nov. 6, following the official dissolution of Google’s proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo. Turns out the guarantee to which I referred was an ironclad one. Sanford Litvack, the attorney who would have been lead counsel in the event of a government antitrust case against Google, tells American Lawyer Daily that the Department of Justice was literally hours away from suing the company when it bailed on the deal.
