【中文标题】谷歌如何在华盛顿玩诡计
【原文标题】How Google plays the angles in Washington
【登载媒体】cnn
【来源地址】http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/30/technology/google_washington/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
【译者】猴猴猴
【翻译方式】人工
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用,未经AC或译者许可,不得转载。
【原文库链接】$ http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-234711-1-1.html
【译文】 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google is barnstorming the nation's capital. Five years after it opened its Washington office, the tech giant is playing an increasingly powerful role in public policy debates over everything from patent reform to foreign policy. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) lobbied 13 government agencies last year, spending just under $6 million in the process. That places the search company right behind Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) among the biggest tech lobbies in Washington.
纽约(CNNMoney.com) - 谷歌正在游说华盛顿。从开设了华盛顿办事处的5年来,这个高科技巨头正在国家政策的决策上发挥日益强大的角色——从专利改革到外交政策的所有方面。 谷歌(GOOG,财富500强)去年游说了13个政府机构,花费近600万美元,在游说华盛顿的高科技公司中仅次于微软(MSFT,财富500强),IBM公司(IBM,财富500强)和甲骨文(ORCL,财富500)。
The company employs 30 staffers in Washington and turns to some of the biggest names in lobbying, including the Podesta Group, Dutko Worldwide and McBee Strategic Consulting, for outside help. Last year, among the 16 bills that Google lobbied Congress on were a proposal to create an investment fund for clean energy and another to publicly detail who is using radio spectrum. Google also advocated for the Federal Communications Commission to support "Net neutrality" -- an unfiltered, and equally accessed Internet. This year, the company's Washington office has been chiefly focused on freedom of speech on the Internet, particularly because of its highly publicized battles with the Chinese government. Last week, Google's policy chief Alan Davidson urged lawmakers to adopt policies that assure a neutral and open Internet at home and put pressure on foreign governments that censor the Web.
该公司在华盛顿雇用30名员工,并求助于游说集体中一些响当当的字号,包括波德斯塔集团、杜特扩全球和麦克比战略咨询,作为外援[1]。
在去年的16个法案中,谷歌游国会,建议为创造一个清洁能源设立投资基金,另一个是公开使用无线电频谱的详细情况。谷歌还建议美国联邦通信委员会支持“网络中立[2]”
——一个未加过滤,可以平等访问的互联网。
今年,该公司驻华盛顿办事处一直致力于互联网上的言论自由,尤其是因为其与中国政府高调的宣传战。上周,谷歌的政策负责人阿兰戴维森敦促国会通过的政策,保证国内有一个中立和开放互联网,并给网络审查的外国政府施压。
Of course, Google's lobbyists are also kept busy with government investigations of the company, whose growing mounds of information on millions of users have raised privacy concerns. The Justice Department has conducted antitrust probes of a since-expired deal between Google and Yahoo, as well as the company's Google Books online electronic library. Google's government influence also reaches into the White House. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt was one of the first and biggest supporters of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, appearing in a 30-minute campaign advertisement and donating $25,000 out of his own pocket for inauguration ceremonies. Obama appointed Schmidt to the administration's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Schmidt visited the White House twice last year and met with President Obama after speaking at the administration's Jobs and Economic Growth Forum on Dec. 3, according to the White House visitors' logs. In addition, a handful of Googlers have gone to work for Obama. Among them is Andrew McLaughlin, a global public policy executive at Google who was hired to be the administration's deputy chief technology officer in June 2009.
当然,谷歌的说客还忙于政府对该公司的调查,其不断增长的,数百万的用户的信息引起隐私(方面)关注。美国司法部已经启动了针对谷歌和雅虎之间的自到期的协议以及“谷歌图书”在线图书馆的反垄断调查。 谷歌的政府影响力也达进入了白宫。谷歌首席执行官埃里克施密特是奥巴马2008年竞选的最早和最大的支持者之一,出现在了30分钟长的竞选广告上,并自腰包为就职典礼捐赠2.5万美元。奥巴马任命施密特在政府的科技顾问。 根白宫访客日志上说,施密特去年两次访问白宫,并于12月3日,在“政府的就业和经济增长论坛”上发表演说后与总统奥巴马进行了会见。 此外,许多谷歌人去为奥巴马工作。其中之一是安德鲁麦克劳克林——谷歌公共政策全球主管,在2009年6月被聘为政府的副首席技术官。
One of the big boys The search leader dipped its toe in the water in Washington in 2003, spending $80,000 to lobby over copyright policies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Davidson, the exec who testified last week, became Google's first full-time Washington employee in 2005. Google mainly concentrates its lobbying efforts on three core issues: open Internet, online privacy and copyright law. But as the company becomes more than just a search advertising company -- making forays into mobile phones and digital books, for instance -- Google has broadened its Washington focus. In 2009, Google started lobbying the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Council on Environmental Quality. "Within the realm of federal lobbying, Google has gone from a veritable non-entity in the early decade to one of the largest lobbying forces among its peers in the United States," said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "They're one of the big boys now."
一个大人物。 根据政治响应中心(的调查),该搜索巨头于2003年在华盛顿初试身手,花了8万美元游说版权政策。主管戴维森,2005年谷歌驻华盛顿的第一批全职雇员,上周证实说。 谷歌主要的游说努力集中于三个核心问题:开放的互联网,在线隐私和版权法。 但当该公司成为不仅仅是一个搜索广告公司时——例如向移动电话和数字图书进军——谷歌拓宽了他在华盛顿的业务。 2009年,谷歌开始游说美国能源部,环境质量部和国防委员会。 “在联邦游说领域,谷歌已经从十年前的无名之辈成长为同行业的一名佼佼者”,政治响应中心的发言人,戴夫列文托说,“他们是一个大人物了。”
For its part, Google has said that it sees its Washington presence as a "lobby shop-think tank hybrid." Many of the 30 people in the company's Washington office are engineers that work with the government to explain implications of new technologies. The office holds periodic "D.C. talks" events for both government officials and advocacy organizations. Google's Washington office also often offers its services to the government. It has partnered with the Center for Disease Control to predict flu outbreaks, and it currently has a tool on the Census 2010 homepage that shows real-time response rates for each neighborhood in the United States.
对于他的角色,谷歌已经表示,它认为它的华盛顿办事处是“游说团和智囊团的混合体。”在该公司华盛顿办事处的30个雇员中,许多人是工程师,他们为政府工作,解释新技术的影响。办事处定期为政府官员和游说组织举办“华盛顿论坛”。 谷歌在华盛顿的办公室也经常为政府提供他们的服务。它已与美国疾病控制中心合作来预测流感的爆发,它目前在2010人口普查主页上有一个工具[3],能够实时显示美国附近的实时响应率。
The 'Net neutrality' issue But even with its enormous presence in government, Google faces an uphill battle on the subject that brought it to Washington in the first place: an open Internet. As an advocate for Net neutrality, Google supports legislation in which Internet service providers (phone and cable companies) would have to allow equal access to all content on the Internet without restrictions. The phone and cable companies strongly oppose Net neutrality, saying they should be free to block services, such as peer-to-peer networking programs, that disrupt overall quality. Google won an initial battle on Net neutrality in October, when the FCC voted to move forward on crafting Internet neutrality rules. Despite the early win and Obama administration support, Google is getting out-lobbied by the telecom companies as the issue moves it way forward at the FCC.
“网络中立”问题 不过,即使有对政府的巨大影响力,谷歌在向华盛顿推销“开放的互联网”这个课题时仍面临一场艰苦的斗争。 作为一个“网络中立”的倡导者,谷歌支持立法,使互联网服务提供商(电话公司和有线电视公司)必须让所有的互联网信息都没有限制地平等地接入。电话公司和有线电视公司强烈反对“网络中立性”,说他们应该可以自由地阻止诸如点对点的网络节目,(这些节目)扰乱整体服务质量。 谷歌,在10月赢得了“网络中立”的初战,联邦通信委员会投票决定推动互联网中立规则的起草。尽管有早期的获胜赢和奥巴马政府的支持,但谷歌正在出局,电信公司的游说也在联邦通信委员会起了作用。
In addition to outspending Google (Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), AT&T (T, Fortune 500), Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) and the National Cable & Telecommunications Asssociation have each outspent Google four-fold in lobbying efforts), the telecoms have been playing the Washington game for a whole lot longer. "Google is like an ant compared to the guys that it is going up against," said Art Brodsky, communications director at Public Knowledge, which is on Google's side of the Net neutrality issue. "The telecom companies have been around for 100 years. People think of Google as this big colossus, and it is, but in Washington, they're really not yet."
除了谷歌巨额开销外,(韦里孙公司(VZ,财富500强),AT&T公司的(T,财富500强),康卡斯特(CMCSA,财富500强)和美国有线电视和电信联盟各自花费谷歌的4被去游说),电信运营商们已经在这场游戏中耗费了太多。
“与那些继续发对的家伙相比,谷歌就像一只蚂蚁”公共利益团体的通讯主管布罗德斯基说,在“网络中立性”问题上他站在谷歌一边。“电信公司存在了大约100年了。人们认为谷歌是个巨人,并且它是,但在华盛顿眼里,他们还不是。”
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