President Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. Photo: White House
Could a reporter revisit this subject two years on and see what Silicon Valley has gotten out of the White House, and ask whether it is good for the country? (Remember, like the Ford Motor Co. used to say about what's good for Ford is good for the country).
The New York Times identified all the people in this White House photo two years ago:
John Doerr, venture capitalist
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (deceased)
Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google (now no longer CEO)
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo (replaced by Google's former VP Marissa Meyer)
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems
Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle
Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
John Hennessy, president Stanford University
Art Levinson, chairman, former CEO, Genentech
Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
While Obama has won a second term, some of these people have lost their positions, and their businesses are stumbling, like Netflix. I've never understood what Twitter's business model was. Was it worth all the craven prostration to them?
Even so, these technologists (mainly Google) got everything they wanted so far.
o pre-emptive announcement of veto of SOPA/PIPA -- check
o executive order on cybersecurity instead of CISPA -- check
o endorsement of mobile phone jailbreaking -- check
o start-up visa support -- check
o good enough relations with China so Silicon Valley's factories overseas not threatened -- check
o good enough relations with Russia so that IBM, Intel investments are secure and steady supply of cheaper programmers in California -- check
o no anti-monopoly lawsuits against Google or other Big IT -- check
o Silicon Valley people granted high official positions in the administration -- check
o no murmuring about how all these companies ship their revenue overseas to pay less taxes at home -- check
Did I leave anything out?
Now, are these businesses of the new media and social media sort really good for the economy? Together, all the social network platforms and Google and such don't equal the number of jobs of a GM. Google just let 1200 people go after acquiring Motorola.
Google is Obama's third largest donor. Google donations to congressmen like Darrel Issa faithfully following this Silicon Valley agenda are huge.
Is all this good for the country?
Recent Comments