It’s no secret that Google has a rather unconventional process of interviewing its potential employees, but the latest reports regarding the tech giant’s hiring policy are more concerning than intriguingly entertaining. Namely, the US nonprofit organization Campaign for Accountability (CfA) has recently conducted research regarding some of Google’s elite employees which suggests that the Mountain View-based company exerts quite a bit of influence on European politics.
The research was carried out by the CfA’s Google Transparency Project, and its results show that over the course of the last decade, Google has not only hired at least 65 public officials from the European Union, but the EU itself has also employed at least 15 people directly from Google. While the numbers themselves can be misleading, the specific cases don’t make Google look any better either. For example, the latest two additions to its employee pool are the Lithuanian ambassador Tomas Gulbinas and the advisor to a French member of the EU Parliament, both of which were hired last year – as lobbyists. During the course of its research, the CfA’s initiative also found out that Google has hired more than 25 British government officials since 2005, which makes the UK Google’s favorite pool of potential ex-government employees. Some of the most notable British names which are now on Google’s payroll include the former budgetary advisor of the UK Treasury Ankur Vora, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s special advisor Verity Harding, as well as Sarah Hunter, a senior policy advisor of Tony Blair, the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, the Google Transparency Project’s representatives have managed to interview the long-serving UK Labor MP Dame Margaret Hodge who stated that she has “absolutely no doubt” that Google’s policy of hiring influential ex-politicians is a coincidence, adding how this is definitely a part of the company’s strategy to gain influence in European politics. On its official website, the CfA has also accused Google of conducting massive systematic political hirings in 2011 after the European Union announced that it’ll be conducting an official investigation of the tech giant’s supposed antitrust laws violations, i.e. violations of laws which prevent large businesses from unfair business practices designed to stifle competition.