Eric Schmidt only cares about you, dear reader
March 19, 2010
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What a load from Google's CEO here.
Here, Eric tries to pain broadband as the next great accomplishment, evoking the national highway system and other major infrastructure projects as models.
OK, some of what Eric writes is pretty funny. For instance, only a revisionist dreamer would try to pretend that the moonshot space program was much more than a panicked, low-tec response to the low-tech Russian rocketry that had Americans shivvering about a nonsensical spaceman gap. (Don't forget that while NASA was strapping men into tin cans, the Air Force was actually flying planes into space and landing them, until that funding was cut.) But hey, what was few billion when we've got digital watches and freeze-dried ice cream, plus monkey-size pressure suits to show for it?
Of course, what Eric doesn't tell you is that his comparison to other great infrastructure investments is also false. Eric and Google want that broadband infrastructure not to advance mankind, but because it would given them a vastly greater ability to put taxes on all of us, with revenue accruing directly to Google. It's only akin to the interstate highway system if you create an interstate highway system that routes a large percentage of traffic through Google's gas stations and diners and weigh stations, and they pay nothing for those franchises.
What do I mean, taxes? Well, first of all... Taxes. 'Eric would like nothing more than for this broadband infrastructure to be built with other people's money, such as yours. He'd also, of course, like to get some kind of legislation and policy set up that would compel the usual builders of this infrastructure (the telcos) to build it on their dime, so that Eric and Google can cry "Net Neutrality," and whine for the same access to such infrastructure as those who built and paid for it. Of course, "the same" in this case isn't the same at all, because with its market share and dominance, Google will get outsized benefit from the spending of other people's money.
Eric and Google have some pretty good experience in this field, like the way they tried to strongarm all online video providers into doing deals with YouTube by dragging their feet on rampant content theft, even though email makes a good case that Lil' Eric's Google knew perfectly well that YouTube's traffic depended greatly on rogue video uploads -- a practice that other emails indicate came straight from YouTube's founders..
"Let’s install broadband fiber as part of every federally-funded infrastructure project, from highways to mass transit. And let’s deploy broadband fiber to every library, school, community health center, and public housing facility in the U.S." sez Eric. And he means it. Because it's your tax dollars, your local bond issues, that pay for this stuff. Not Eric's.
So don't call Eric evil. Don't even call him greedy. He just wants to help you. That's why he took out an ad on the Washington post web page (next to the YouTube piracy story) to try and tell us how much he cares about us all. And if he and Sergey and Larry make another few hundred million dumping Google shares along the way, with the help of some nice taxpayer subsidies from folks like you, well, that's got nothing to do with it at all. Perish the thought.
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