Google meets with White House officials once a week on average
In the wake of the Federal Trade Commission’s 2012 probe into Google’s search practices, it’s becoming clearer just how much clout the search giant has in Washington. According to visitor logs and emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal, high-ranking Google staffers, including Eric Schmidt, met with White House officials 230 times across two terms, or roughly once a week in four years. Those meetings also took place in the final weeks before the commission settled with Google, backing away from what would have been the biggest antitrust lawsuit since the Justice Department took on Microsoft in the 1990s.
The documents don’t show what was discussed in the late-2012 meetings, and the FTC insists it maintains independence as a…
Source:: The Verge

