Google Funding Evil
Google’s climate scientists are not happy with the company’s political support for climate science denying Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). In 2011, the search giant launched the Google Science Communication Fellows effort, “to help foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue.” The dialogue took an unexpected turn on Thursday, when 17 of those fellows wrote a letter to Chairman Eric Schmidt and CEO Larry Page, saying that though Google is a business and has to work with both parties to serve its interests, “there are times where companies like Google must display moral leadership and carefully evaluate their political bedfellows.” They conclude: “Google’s support of Senator James Inhofe’s re-election campaign is one of those moments.” Google announced a July 11, 2013, fundraiser for Senator Inhofe at their Washington DC office, which prompted over 150,000 people to sign petitions telling Google: “Don’t Fund Evil” — a play on the company’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto.
JPMorgan Pays $410 Million Fine for Energy Price Scheme
The financial giant JPMorgan is paying a $410 million fine for driving up energy prices in California and the Midwest. JPMorgan agreed to the penalty without admitting to government allegations it manipulated utilities to raise the price of electricity. It is the largest settlement in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s history. The British firm Barclays has been hit with a similar fine but is refusing to pay. JPMorgan is facing a more expensive government penalty for its role in pushing toxic mortgage-backed securities. According to The New York Times, the firm is currently under investigation from eight different federal regulators.
NSA PRISM program a traffic boost for DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo, a search engine, just like Google. Though it’s not the 800-pound guerrilla that Google is, it has been steadily gaining converts, even becoming the default search engine in the Web browsers on many Gnu/Linux distributions. According to a story in The Guardian, the NSA RPISM story has led to a major surge in traffic for the young search engine’s services. Quoting Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckgo’s founder, the company went from serving 1.7 million searches per day at the beginning of June (2013) to 3.0 million daily two weeks later.