Last week, after antitrust scholar Barry Lynn praised the European Commission’s decision to fine Google for anti-competitive practices, his Open Markets program at the Google-backed New America Foundation was terminated. Robert Levine offers a nuanced perspective on the relevance of Google-scale money in policy think tanks, suggesting that what isn’t said may be at least as significant as what is said.
“That’s one of the big problems in the think tank world–not what direct pressure Google might have put on New America, but the idea that it might not be able to afford to upset one of its main benefactors. How many scholars decided not to challenge Google not because of a confrontation but out of the desire to avoid one?,” Levine writes.
