Google has probably bought researchers

It is the classic lobbying strategy: paying researchers to publish results that benefit the organization.

Google Businesscampus

Google has also apparently done this. This has resulted in two investigations by the Wall Street Journal and the NGO Campaign for Accountability. According to this, over the past twelve years, scientists have received money from Google for hundreds of publications, mostly for legal work. This is, for example, about copyright, patents and network neutrality.

For each article, Google paid between 5000 and 400,000 dollars. The authors had not stated in about two-thirds of the cases that they had been sponsored by the group. The organization Campaign for Accountability assumes that the Internetriese wanted to influence the public debate with the purchased works. This is the case, for example, when a large number of articles on the topic of antitrust law came out, especially when the US government scrutinized Google.

Google has responded with a blog entry and called the reports misleading.