Google Goes Inside the Beltway

Google, the once-upstart search outfit, has hired its first full-time lobbyist in Washington, technology-law expert and Washington veteran Alan Davidson. "Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication, and innovation," Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, wrote in an Oct. 6 company blog. The move to beef up lobbying coincides with forays by the online giant Google into a host of new markets and services beyond basic Web search. Google's push into Internet-calling service Google Talk and a plan to provide Wi-Fi for San Francisco threatens to tread on turf dominated by the biggest phone carriers. With an overhaul of landmark telecom legislation pending and legal battles brewing, Google needs to widen its influence in Washington while its developers dream up pie-in-the-sky projects in Silicon Valley. "The company is bleeding into so many new sectors and businesses that there are any number of government policies the company should be involved in," says Blair Levin, a managing director at Legg Mason and a former chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission. Davidson, who joined Google on May 31, is well-suited to wave the company flag in the nation's capital. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained computer scientist and graduate of Yale Law School, Davidson served for eight years as associate director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit think tank and initiative group that opposes government and industry control of the Internet, while advocating user privacy. Associates say Davidson is best known for his work on intellectual-property and Internet-privacy policy issues. He has argued against the mandatory inclusion of special content locks in digital-recording devices and testified before Congress for increased measures to protect personal privacy online.
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Burt Helm]
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051010_0156_t...