Investigation: in the last five years, six EU academic institutes received tens of millions of pounds in funding from Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft
The search giant has provided tens of millions of pounds of funding to academics investigating issues closely related to its business model. Tweets: @ggreenwald , @jerrysaltz , @randfish , and @ggreenwald See also Mediagazer Tweets: Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : Google and Facebook love you and want what's best for you. That's why they censor: to help you and keep you safe. https://twitter.com/... Jerry Saltz / @jerrysaltz : Guess which company has more lobbyists than any other concern in the country? Yup: Facebook. Break it up. Rand Fishkin / @randfish : I've heard a lot of skepticism and scoffing when suggesting that Google/FB lobbied for and got what they wanted with EU laws like GDPR. One of the ways that happens is through funding of tech policy institutions, as laid out here: https://www.newstatesman.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : It continues to amaze me how many people are willing to cheer for Google acting as global arbiter of what views may and may not be disseminated. If you trust Silicon Valley monopolies to police discourse, it means you're not only authoritarian but foolish: it will come for you. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This investigation extends a documented pattern: a year earlier, the Washington Post reported that Amazon, Facebook, and Google were covertly funding political groups to counter US antitrust pressure. Now the same companies' money shows up inside six EU academic institutes — tens of millions of pounds over five years, often for research into questions close to the funders' own business models.
First-order effects
- The six named institutes face an immediate credibility test on work touching their donors' business interests, with the funders — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft — exposed to scrutiny over which research questions got financed.
Second-order effects
- EU antitrust enforcers and policymakers weighing platform cases must now discount or independently verify academic evidence produced at donor-funded centers, complicating the evidentiary base the same companies were already working to shape through funded advocacy groups.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across both lobbying and scholarship, expect disclosure requirements for corporate research funding in Europe to tighten, forcing institutes to choose between big-tech money and regulatory-facing legitimacy.
The trend: Big Tech's influence spending is broadening from lobbying and media deals like Google's News Corp payments into the academic layer that supplies the evidence regulators rely on.