It turns out many Google’s employees are fans of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). They are happily donating thousands to support their campaigns, even though both presidential candidates want to break up their company.
Google employees “donated a total of $87,000 to Warren’s presidential bid so far,” based on their FEC data for the first two quarters of 2019, according to Vox Recode. They also found $58,000 in donations to Sanders.
Recode noted that Sanders “has said on several occasions that he would ‘absolutely’ consider breaking up big tech but hasn’t shared many specifics.”
The pair of senators Recode described as “leading the charge to break up Big Tech,” also got the most money “out of all presidential candidates from Google employees,” Recode concluded. It found a total of $361,314 in Google employee donations to a combined 12 candidates (11 of the Democratic candidates plus President Donald Trump). $355,693 of that total went to Democrats.
It also noted former Google CEO and current Google technical adviser Eric Schmidt’s donation to former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign. FEC data also showed Schmidt gave $2,800 to New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker’s campaign for the 2019-2020 cycle.
Aside from the reported issues employees have had with Google, Recode noted that many of the people they interviewed “believed the candidates’ causes superseded any issues with tech or Google.”
In other words, the monetary support for the candidates isn’t as much a rebuke to Google as it is an indication of Google employee enthusiasm for extremely liberal candidates.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also held a July 16, hearing to investigate allegations of censorship and bias by Google. Google has claimed that their algorithm programming has not been engineered for bias against conservatives.
The Washington Times noted June 26, that “conservative frustration with Big Tech bias bubbled over this week amid fresh evidence of behind-the-scenes political manipulation at Google, spurring calls for federal action to prevent the industry from putting its thumb on the scales of the 2020 election.”
But the latest funding data affirms that many in the company lean far to the left.
Recode admitted that its donation analysis showed “Google employees — who, like much of the tech industry, lean liberal — have given a total of $5,600 to Trump’s reelection campaign so far.” The only candidate to get less was Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
The article said a longtime employee described the company as a “Hilary Clinton-style place” in 2016, but these days employees are “veering further to the left than the more moderate Democratic party line, particularly when it comes to calling for sweeping economic reform,” Recode said.
Google has been under heavy fire for accusations of systemic bias against conservatives, a point Recode omitted. In fact, Google is in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from two former Google employees for political bias against conservatives and other things. On June 10, a judge allowed the case against the company to move forward.
