Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

Do not be evil.

It was a slogan jointly proposed by Google's 7th employee, Amit Patel, and 23rd employee, Paul Buchheit, in 1999. It originated from the concerns of early Google employees about commercial expansion. Amit Patel wrote "Don't be evil" on a whiteboard in a meeting room and proposed to establish it as the sole corporate purpose, and then formally write it into the company's code of conduct.

Google's 2004 IPO prospectus also explicitly quoted this statement, emphasizing "doing the right thing" through honest business practices.

Of course, after Google's restructuring in 2015, the slogan in its code of conduct was changed to "Do the right thing," but "Do no evil" was still retained as an important part of its code of conduct and values.

Then in May 2018, Google removed the repeatedly mentioned "Don't be evil" statement from its code of conduct, leaving only a reminder at the end.

So it's clear that Google didn't follow this principle after early employees gradually left the company.

In 2011, Google, which advocates "Don't be evil," spent the second-highest amount of money in the United States, second only to General Electric, on lobbying Washington politicians.

In the first quarter of 2012, Google spent $500 million on lobbying Congress.

In comparison, Apple only has 50, Facebook only has 65, and Amazon's 87 is already considered relatively high among tech companies.

Google spent more than twice as much as these three companies combined.

This $500 million wasn't handed to senators as checks; that would be bribery, which would land you in jail even in the US. Of course, the American methods are much more elaborate.

The first item is campaign donations.

Google established a special GPAC (General Political Action Committee) where employees voluntarily donate money, which is then distributed to candidates from both parties.

During Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, Google employees were one of his largest sources of corporate donations.

Schmidt himself wrote personal checks directly to the Super PACs that support Obama. Super PACs have no donation cap, and the only restriction is that they cannot coordinate campaign strategies with the candidate's team.

The second is lobbying firms.

Google employs an astonishing 12 lobbying firms, spread across every building on K Street. K Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in Washington, D.C., located between the White House and Capitol Hill, and is known as Lobbying Street due to its concentration of lobbying organizations. It is considered the fourth branch of government in the United States, alongside the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The employees of these companies are generally former government officials, such as former senator chiefs of staff, former FTC commissioner assistants, and former White House legal counsel.

An ordinary citizen wanting to see a senator has to call the receptionist and schedule an appointment three months in advance. These people can go directly into government offices to see someone and won't be stopped. These companies receive huge sums of money from Google every year and live quite comfortably.

They won't directly help you with the hearing, but they can let you know in advance who will say what at the hearing, and even lobby and broker things up, so you can just follow the script.

Knowing it's a Silicon Valley company headquartered in California, Google feared being labeled a Democratic donor in Washington, D.C. Therefore, it specifically hired former Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari to head its Washington office. Molinari was a prominent figure in Congress during the 1990s, having served as vice chair of the Republican National Convention.

These are just the publicly available data; the hidden investments are even more staggering.

For example, Google donates millions of dollars annually to the George Mason University Center for Law and Economics, which hosts annual seminars on internet technology and invites current members of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to participate.

The conclusions of the papers presented at each symposium naturally favored Google. For example, in previous years, the search engine market lacked entry barriers, and regulatory agencies didn't need to intervene excessively. This year, the conclusion was that the framework for deep learning was too important, requiring strong government intervention.

Another example is the revolving door phenomenon unique to Western politics. This specific term originated from the ways in which government officials in Western societies seek personal gain. Officials move between the public and private sectors, using their existing authority or influence to seek personal benefits.

Google poached Susan Michelle, a former patent expert at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, to work in its internal legal department. She was acutely aware of how easily Google's actions could be used against them. She could even casually meet with former colleagues for coffee to obtain fringe information that wasn't entirely confidential, but was nonetheless crucial.

Of course, in addition to the aforementioned standard practices, Google also has more innovative ways of doing things.

Google holds free training sessions every year at the White House and Capitol Hill, teaching congressional teams how to use Google tools for voter data analysis. A congressional assistant who has mastered Google's system will naturally gravitate towards Google's ecosystem when preparing campaign strategies for their boss next time.

Google, being the company it is, naturally wouldn't stand idly by and watch its competitors succeed. Whatever they do, it will always find a way to hinder them.

Three days after the joint announcement from Apple and Disney went live, Schmidt activated Google's entire evil machine in the chairman's office at Google.

His first goal was a congressional hearing.

Schmidt called Susan Molinari directly, asking her to find someone to advance both hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Both committees have jurisdiction over merger reviews: the Senate Judiciary Committee over antitrust, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee over consumer protection. This requires a pretext to hold hearings, which isn't hard to find; Apple is too powerful, making it a natural reason.

Molinari knew Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and every chief of staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee; he met with two of them that day.

Subsequently, Schmidt personally contacted Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udel.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Udel naturally has a greater focus on privacy and security issues.

Schmidt wants Udel to write a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting a thorough review of the risks of vertical integration in the Apple-Disney merger to consumer data privacy and the home entertainment market.

This wasn't the first time Udel had done something like this. In 2011, Schmidt was publicly reprimanded for an hour by Wisconsin Senator Herb Cole, a veteran Democratic senator. A month later, Udel wrote a letter to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, urging caution in handling investigations into internet companies.

On the same day, Google's lobbying team also contacted the chiefs of staff of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.

Kerry is the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his focus is on foreign influence. Grassley is a senior Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, known for his ruthless stance on mega-corporation mergers; his involvement could turn this into a bipartisan issue.

Google's rhetoric to both sides was completely consistent: they weren't against mergers and acquisitions, but they cared about fair competition and hoped that regulators would have sufficient time and resources to make an independent judgment. In plain terms: We have enough money; help me stop them.

Subsequently, Google's overseas divisions also began to take action.

They submitted a document to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, with the core argument that Apple, Aurora, and Disney have formed the world’s first fully integrated digital closed loop, encompassing chip design, content distribution, and streaming platforms.

The EU's antitrust regulations are stricter and the process is more complicated. Once the decision is made to initiate a second phase of in-depth review, the global deal between Apple and Disney will have to wait at least another nine months. And with any acquisition, the longer it is delayed, the more likely things are to go wrong.

Finally, Schmidt reached out to an ally who had been trembling with fear in recent days: Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal.