Sundar Pichai Confirms Google Gave Money to National Review Institute

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the tech giant gave funds to the National Review Institute, the policy arm of establishment conservative magazine National Review — but there is a discrepancy in Pichai’s explanation of why the donation is not listed in the company’s annual transparency report.

Pichai used his written answers to congressional questions to disclose his company’s donation to the National Review Institute, which was revealed by National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg last year. The Google CEO confirmed the donation, stating that it was made in 2018 and would, therefore, be disclosed in the company’s next report.

“Google has a long history of supporting organizations on all sides of the political spectrum,” said Pichai. “Google was one of several corporate sponsors of the National Review Institute’s William F. Buckley Prize Dinner in 2018, which is scheduled to be reported in our upcoming transparency report.”

But the National Review Institute’s website states that it received a donation from Google a year earlier, in 2017. This donation was not disclosed in Google’s transparency report for that year.

Google’s contributions to the National Review Institute were brought to light by a report in the left-leaning technology magazine Wired, which detailed a number of the tech giant’s contributions to establishment conservative institutions in order to fend off tech regulation from Republicans. Other organizations funded by Google include the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

National Review subsequently published an article from a senior member of the CEI, arguing against the use of antitrust legislation to break up Google and other big tech companies. The article was published four months after the National Review Institute’s 2017 William F. Buckley Prize Dinner, which as the Institute’s own website discloses, was sponsored by Google among other companies.

National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg admitted to the Google funding in an article following a Twitter exchange with One America News correspondent Emerald Robinson last year, in which she criticized the links between Goldberg’s magazine and big tech.

Responding in his article, Goldberg admitted that “I learned that Google gave some money to NRI for the Buckley Prize dinner only because I asked about it this week,” but still attacked Robinson for drawing attention to it, disparaging the OAN reporter as a “ridiculous person” and “MAGA infomercial hostess.”

“No one has ever told me what to write or not to write, re: Google or any other corporation throughout my entire time at NR” insisted Goldberg.

Nevertheless, the National Review senior editor went on to argue that the case for breaking up Google has not yet been made.

“I am open to the idea of breaking up Google and/or Facebook,” wrote Goldberg. “But it’s worth noting that doing so would be a very radical move, which is why not even Robinson’s beloved Trump administration is considering it. It would also be an insanely stupid thing to do for the sake of stopping the suppression of conservative views, not least because it wouldn’t solve the problem and because it would do great harm to all sorts of economic and constitutional principles.”

Breitbart News has reached out to Google for comment.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on TwitterGab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.

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