Google tags Wikileaks as a dangerous site

"Work with government" means lots of things.

The NSA leaks proved that the NSA hacked Google's network infrastructure. That isn't exactly "working with the government".

There are other things where Google does work with the US and other governments. I believe they pass Flu Trends data to the CDC for example....

And which government branch do you think that Google is working with here?

The #DNCLeaks thing is a anti-Hillary story, promoted mostly by bitter Bernie Sanders promoters. There are some Trump supporters jumping on too, but they seem a minority. It's inside-baseball for DNC wonks.

I could see an argument that someone at Google is a Hillary Clinton supporter and therefore took it on themselves to take it down. That would be a dumb thing to do, but at least would make sense.

But which government branch would try to get Google to do it? The White House wouldn't be so stupid - it would leak in an instant. Some secret three-letter agency? Why would they care? Some other department?

DNC Leaked emails are not interesting, but a plagiarized paragraph by Trump's wife is interesting?

Are you saying that politicians and political parties do not wield power and influence and do nothing to influence the media? The main purpose of politics is to wield power and influence, and the media is core to this. Are you saying that media is unbiased despite the fact that they are on record contributing to particular candidates' campaigns, e.g. Time Warner (CNN) being one of Clinton's top contributors?

You are either burying your head in the sand, or you are part of the misinformation campaign yourself.

Of course many at Google support the Democrat party. That's pretty well known. I assume there are plenty of Republicans too.

Peter Thiel is an early investor in Facebook, and he spoke at the Trump convention. Marc Andreessen is well known as a (non-Trump!) conservative supporter.

I don't see that any of these things prove anything except that people are political.

Show me some evidence that "Google is protecting the Democrats and hates Wikileaks" - not just that people at Google are supporters of one of the two US political parties. That just means they live in the US.

The Assange thing is different. He's saying that Google acts as an unofficial representative of the US Government, not as a Democratic party entity. I don't think he makes that case very well, but even if it is true it isn't the same thing.

The Democrat/Hillary thing is non-news in and of itself. I wouldn't bat an eye if a CEO of any other company did the exact same thing (as long as there weren't signs they were somehow exploiting the company's own reach to affect politics; there's no evidence of that for Schmidt).

The actual cause for concern here is Schmidt's strange willingness to effectively act as some kind of sleeper agent for the State Department (per Assange's writings and the interview transcript). Or perhaps an intelligence agency; it seems fairly plausible he was asked to speak to Assange as a way of gathering intelligence.

That's deeply concerning, and suggests Schmidt has a rather special relationship with the government. If he were no longer affiliated with Google/Alphabet, it'd still be shady yet not really violating any standards. But as CEO/chairman, it's a massive conflict of interest and suggests that the government likely was or is trying to exploit Google's leadership in some way.

Not that I blame the government here. If I were the CIA or NSA or State Department, I'd be trying to get my tentacles around massively influential companies, too. I only blame Schmidt for going along with it to such a degree.

After this knowledge is taken into account, Schmidt's involvement with the election seems a little weirder.

There are 3 factors here:

* An influential non-government civilian willing to do the State Department's dirty work, possibly at the behest of an intelligence agency

* An influential non-government civilian willing to devote a lot of time, resources, and technology to getting the State Department head elected President

* The chief executive of one of the world's largest companies

Any combination of 2 of these things isn't that odd. But the fact that someone was 1) acting covertly for a government agency, 2) working hard to get an important person in that agency elected, also attempting to be covert in the process, 3) is the executive chairman of Alphabet...

Even if the government isn't really doing anything malicious here, and Schmidt's involvement in these matters are all coincidental and his own ideas and purely due to his personal patriotism or love of the State Department and Hillary or whatever, it doesn't make it any less irresponsible to do all that while still acting as a powerful corporate executive. And even if that weren't so bad, it seems like something he is trying to really sweep under the rug as much as he can, which itself is very suspicious.

In short, regardless of the motives or conspiracies or lack thereof, all of these revelations make Schmidt seem very untrustworthy. It doesn't necessarily make Google as a whole less trustworthy, but it absolutely could if more leaks come out, and it also casts suspicion on other Google execs.

You can't call something an "anti-Hillary story" if it's an uneditorialized dump of emails. Of course it's mostly Bernie supporters pushing it: the leaks show the DNC worked against Bernie while colluding with Hillary's camp.

Hillary and her supporters won't talk about it because it favors them, the DNC won't because they violated bylaws requiring impartiality, and the media won't report because the leak shows they've been taking orders from the DNC.