I'm under no illusion that Google's anything other massive tech-savvy advertising company, but the self-serving corporate side of the company is usually hidden behind the pretty veneer of "tech for the people". Supporting a trade agreement like the TPP (especially given the lack of transparency in the process) lacks their usual subtlety.
(+) He's been polling in double-digits for weeks now, three points shy of the threshold for getting in the debates. That's a "current candidate" in my book.
All current presidential candidates have come out against the TPP whilst running for office, that's not necessarily going to be their position if they reach the White House. Hilary Clinton was promoting the TPP before the current presidential race.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/...
Convince me. I'm open. But I also want you to include counter-arguments. I want to hear both sides to reach a conclusion.
So far most anti-TPP arguments I've read are high on rhetoric and low on substance.
It's a large and complicated document; there's plenty of room for bad ideas, and plenty of room for good. The real question is, "Would we rather have nothing?" Because the existing ecosystem of loosely-affiliated nation-by-nation policies is a sh-tshow.
Do you know how many consumer advocacy groups are included in the negotiation process for TPP? I gather it's zero. Given the process is specifically intended to keep out consumers, why should we believe the end result will be any different?
I think a strong nation is good for consumers, and a weak nation destroys the consumer base.
Accept that free trade as a general principal is a good thing for all parties.
NAFTA and agreements modeled after it have this in common: They throw US manufacturing jobs under the bus so that we can all have more competitive, fuel efficient, cheaper, safer cars. (Hooray).
OK, so lets say we just killed ~2,000,000 'decent paying' jobs, many of them union, and did a number on hundreds of rust belt communities. Well thats fine, everyone is better off. We are saving money here. Saving Lives.
But what about other industries? Pharmaceuticals do not support nearly the number of jobs that auto industry does. Maybe 30,000 very well paying white collar jobs, people who are upwardly mobile and educated. It is widely accepted that that industry is sapping US economy of strength. We regularly pay 10X what other countries do. Why don't we open up that market to competition too!
Oh wait, thats an industry with deep connections in Washington. They rank up there with banks as the largest political donors, spend the most on lobbyists, and so on. So count them out, they don't need competition.
OK, so the standard counter argument to this is that Pharma is a special case. We let them keep the fat on their margins because... innovation! Think of all the lives we are saving by shoveling them money! If only it were that simple.
The overwhelming majority of the increase in lifespan over the past 100 years has not been modern medicine; its been public health efforts like sewars, safety standards, and as well as a handful of fluke cures like polio vaccine, penicillin, smallpox vaccine, no thanks to the pharmaceutical industrial complex.
I could go on, the point is that too often trade deals are structured to protect the politically connected and their interests while regressively opening up high employment industries to competition. So even if you believe that free trade is a great thing (I do) it is also valid to acknowledge that it has historically been adopted in a regressive way.
Medicine is by far the most flagrant example, but plenty of others.
Another valid, if more contrived argument is this: A trade agreement is a treaty. Once a treaty is passed, congress cannot easily change it; it become the domain of the executive branch and regulatory agencies specified in the treaty. So a lot of progressive critics see it as a way of creating a court system to mediate trade disputes which is not accountable to the laws that congress makes or repeals.
On example of this is the cigarette industry, which has successfully used NAFTA courts to prevent third word countries from banning sales or making labeling requirements on the grounds that it was a violation of IP and so on.
But the bigger problem is that you have this international body making decisions that effect everyone which is not directly accountable to anyone. So in its way it is a separation of powers and taxation without representation type argument which really requires deeper reading than I can provide here.
Is the only way for progress to happen?
And even if the TPP is completely beneficial, it is still part of the philosophy of economic integration. Which at its heart is promoting the centralization of power and the diminishment of classical liberalism.
The cynic in me says thinks of the TPP as a gigantic pile of economic concessions to specific corporate interests.
The more generous interpretation is that free trade creates winners and losers, but there's generally more winners than losers. The length of the agreement is then the result of multilateral negotiations. Each party realizes - in excruciating detail - how they're getting screwed, and attempts to negotiate concessions for agreeing to the entire thing.
> If you made TPP a concise document with 5-10 specific objectives they would all be litigated for decades to decide on the very same special cases that are detailed in the 2,000 page agreement.
I started reading the TPP today, but I didn't get far enough to form an opinion, although I suspect that would be ideal. In a world changing as fast as ours having an agreement span 3 decades seems laughable.
Even selling a company for just 8-figures is more than 5-10 pages and these deals far eclipse that amount and probably directly involve hundreds of people if not thousands.
This key point seems to get lost in the debate.
> It prohibits discrimination against foreign Internet services
As a Dutchman I can see why Google likes this.
In Canada we have laws that protect personal health data. For instance my doctor cannot save my patient data outside of the country. This is a major pain for SAAS vendors, and I understand google's position. However, as a patient I appreciate knowing that my personal health data is not being sent around the world to other jurisdictions that may not have the same privacy and data protection laws that we do here.
So, I have to wonder do we have a problem of countries requiring local storage for reasons that are questionable? Or is this simply a preemptive strike ensuring companies like google continue their easy access to global markets? Given my example above I suggest its the latter.
It is not fair to consider internet being global and borderless when it is in corps advantage, but segmented and controlled when it comes to consumers rights. Right?
An open, public endorsement of something that most tech enthusiasts who use their products know is a bad thing, is a very surprising move. I'm pretty sure I've seen a number of Google employees condemning the TPP in the last year or two as well.
I very much doubt most of their users could even tell you what it stood for, let alone have an opinion on its value.
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/23/americans-fa...
That survey was from Spring (only a US company would forget that the other hemisphere has a different season) 2015. That was prior to the TPP being publicly available. Attitudes seem to have changed considerably since then.
And just today, Google was accused of whitewashing Hillary Clinton's record and not showing negative autocomplete terms [2].
Google's "don't be evil" mantra is just a way to inoculate themselves from criticism. If anyone accuses them of anything unethical or evil or inappropriate, they can always claim how they are "not doing anything evil" because that's their policy. It becomes circular logic.
Assange has exposed Google's close ties to the State Department in the past as well. For example, give this NY Times article a read [3]. If you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, Assange also published a book about his meeting with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google [4] and he published the complete transcript of their meeting. He also covered how Jared Cohen, formerly a State Department employee, was involved in regime changes around the world while at Google.
Assange also states that in 2015 former Google CEO Eric Schmidt launched “The Groundwork,” a startup specifically designed to get Clinton elected. [5]
Finally, Clinton's email release also confirmed that Google was involved in helping Syrian rebels who were trying to bring down the Syrian regime [6].
[0] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/google-wor...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-google-search-vi...
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banalit...
[4] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
[5] http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/09/julian-assange-google-is-i...
[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...
That was a pretty silly accusation. It was mostly based on comparing Google autocomplete terms to Bing and Yahoo autocomplete terms. To show a pro-Clinton bias on the part of Google what you need to concentrate on is comparing Google autocomplete terms for Clinton searches to Google autocomplete terms for other people.
Do that experiment and you find that the kind of things that appear to be removed from Clinton autocomplete are also removed from the autocomplete of many other people, including many politicians, current and past celebrities, and criminals.
There is a good discussion of how Google tries to avoid autocompletes that could be seen as disparaging here [1].
[1] http://www.clayburn.wtf/2016/06/google-probably-isnt-manipul...
"...Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name..."
So, I guess somebody at Google is deciding what is offensive or disparaging? And we shoulld trust that the standard is being applied equally to both parties, in spite of Google having a vested interest in the Democrats? OK, let's see.
There is a VERY VERY popular nickname for Secretary Clinton, "Crooked Hillary", which has been widely reported on, and is all over Twitter. So let's try:
"Crooked Hil" -> The final item in the list is "Crooked Hillary Bernie". Which makes no sense. Why not remove it entirely?
Now let's try Trump.
"Crooked Tru" -> First item on the list is "Crooked Trump". Which isn't even a meme or anything.
Politics is full of offensive and disparaging statements. By censoring those terms, Google is presenting a worse search product to the world.
Guess what? A week and a half ago you got 'crooked Hilllary' now you don't, and it's nowhere to bed found....
They censored the results in her favor, no doubt about it.
That would seem to adequately explain why they might block them...
This is a clear break from the EFF's position (https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp) and a strong indication of their increasing closed door ties with the Obama administration.
Competition & Business Facilitation
Competition Policy
Cooperating & Capacity Building
Cross Border Trade in Services
Customs Administration & Trade Facilitation
Development
Dispute Settlement
Electronic Commerce
Environment
Financial Services
Government Procurement
Intellectual Property
Investment
Labour
National Treatment & Market Access for Goods
Regulatory Coherence
Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures
Sanitary & Phytosanitary Measures
Small & Medium-sized Businesses
State-Owned Enterprises
Technical Barriers to Trade
Telecommunications
Temporary Entry for Business Persons
Textiles & Apparel
Trade Remedies
Transparency & Anti-Corruption
This is especially true when you consider that much of the EFF's criticism of the IP section is over provisions that are already in effect in the US, and to a lesser extent in Europe. For instance, the US and Europe already have the 70 year copyright term, and the US and Europe already have anti-circumvention measures (DMCA in the US, the Copyright Directive [1] in the EU). Basically, many of the things the EFF objects to ALREADY APPLY to Google in most of Google's markets.
A core purpose of the EFF is to keep IP law from spinning out of control, and to roll back the places where it already has (which is pretty much everywhere). This would be more nearly impossible than it already is if the US laws calcify into treaty form, which is a very good reason for them to oppose the TPP.
This is what I want when I grow up. I want this power.
Seems like "criminal" and "indictment" are filtered out, which happens to benefit Hillary but seems to apply to other people. I tried a indicted people and it didn't autocomplete.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/10/google-denie...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/10/technology/hillary-clinton-g...
>These provisions will support the Internet’s open architecture and make it more difficult for TPP countries to block Internet sites -- so that users have access to a web that is global, not just local.
I do however believe that there is a aspect that has been overlooked here. Many cooperations, private and governmentally controlled, handle sensitive data. Having a SLA with Microsoft, Amazon or Google that states that this highly sensitive data is ONLY to be stored in specific data centers is the only way for a lot of non flexible IT departments to regain some control over their data. This is a widely popular demand. I can only see this as the "X eyes" with USA in charge removing one more hurdle in their way to total information control.
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-implications-for-s...
Hahahahahahaha.
Bing is alright, to be honest (some of their data widgets are more comprehensive than Google's), but you will find times with Bing that you are sad with the results.
That's the killer feature for me: it actually obeys "advanced search" operators.
If they are so proud, surely a banner on Google is appropriate. It's for a good cause after all.
At a fundamental level, US defining and guiding the world economic order as it has done with Bretton woods.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/how-tpp-will-affect-yo...
Trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are beginning to recognize the Internet’s transformative impact on trade.
I clearly don't support TPP in the first place, but I find this announcement from Google borderline insulting, TPP or not. The condescending tone alone makes me cringe, but the whole "we're fighting for freedom" cover story is just disgusting.
This is really it, I think. Makes sense. They don't want another China to happen to them.
I thought it was a very enjoyable way to learn about the agreement and why one might oppose it.
1) Data protection regulation that would severely impact Google.
Google is kinda caught in the crossfire here. The EU is upset at the US intelligence community (Post-Snowden), and wishes to have some assurance of protection for their citizen's communication. The USG does not see why it should do this, and the data protection regulation is the EU's way of saying: If we can't get you to cooperate by being friendly, we will have to pass legislation that will hurt US companies; they can then perhaps pay lobbyists to change your mind. So it is not really Googles fault, but they are caught in the middle.
2) Anti-Trust considerations.
Google is extremely dominant in the European market, much more so than in the US. See #3. The momentum for an Antitrust case in the EU is high.
3) Industrial policy considerations.
Right now, the EU does not have an "Internet powerhouse"; there simply are no modern Internet giants in the EU. Interestingly, both China and Russia have "inadvertently" created local giants (mostly by censorship, which has had the strange side-effect of being equivalent to import tariffs, but for Internet services -- e.g. an accidental protectionist measure that allowed local competition to emerge). Some voices have been heard in recent months that advocate that the only way the EU won't get entirely left behind is industrial policy toward creating an internet giant. This could even mean blocking US-based giants for a while.
If TPP passes, Google will have a very powerful tool to wield against these three concerns. It is entirely rational of them to support it.
Things only start changing when it gets bad enough to walk away.
TPP must be ditched because it's an abomination in the current form, and it's not fixable because of "fast track".
Google should officially change from "don't be evil" to "be evil" now.