By: Hadassah Kalatizadeh
Google has made it a priority to take on more than just the internet. Recently the tech giant, whose parent company is Alphabet Inc., has become involved in politics, speaking out against global warming, and hosted a summit in Italy for the cause last week.
Google saw no discrepancy in transporting celebrity guests for a climate summit via gas guzzling boats and private jets. As reported by the NY Post, the three day Google camp fest was hosted in the petite island of Panarea, where about 200 celebrities took 114 private jets and partied aboard $400 million mega yachts. The Post reported that the star-studded flights alone pumped 864 tons of carbon dioxide into the air. Not to mention all the Maseratis, Ferraris, Porches and high-end SUVs which were used upon their arrival. The focus of the summit, which ended on Thursday, was climate change, but other topics including human rights, politics and online privacy were also addressed. Google reportedly spend roughly $20 million to host the seaside soiree at the Verdura Resort.
One group of four attendees, which included Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Oprah Winfrey and Bradley Cooper, took a small rubber boat, with a rather large tank of gas, around Sicily to the island — full-sized motorboats are forbidden there. Other attendees at the fest included Leonardo DiCaprio, Harry Styles, Diane Von Furstenberg, and Naomi Campbell. Former President Obama was reportedly expected as a speaker, but he didn’t show up. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, spoke zealously announcing that he and Meghan Markle would only have one more child (in addition to newborn son Archie), due to the deteriorating condition of the planet. Google flew him in to speak via both a private jet and helicopter. Residents of the small town of Selinunte, where the summit was, got the short end of the stick, being warned not peek out their windows or stare at the stars.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, spoke zealously announcing that he and Meghan Markle would only have one more child (in addition to newborn son Archie), due to the deteriorating condition of the planet. Google flew him in to speak via both a private jet and helicopter. Photo Credit: Shutterstock 
Other attendees at the fest included Leonardo DiCaprio, (Harry Styles, Diane Von Furstenberg, and Naomi Campbell. Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org 
One group of four attendees, which included Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Oprah Winfrey and Bradley Cooper, took a small rubber boat, with a rather large tank of gas, around Sicily to the island — full-sized motorboats are forbidden there. Photo Credit: MEGA
Google is the world’s second-largest internet company by revenue. The tech giant, founded in 1998 and based Mountain View, Calif, is considered part of the ‘Big Four’ favorite technology stocks, alongside Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The company’s mission, as per its statement on its website is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Apparently, as part of this mission, the company feels it should use its muscle to influence presidential elections. A former Google engineer, who claims he was blacklisted and fired last summer for his right-winged stance, says he believes the company will try to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, as per Fox News. “They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda,” Kevin Cernekee said. “They have very biased people running every level of the company,” Cernekee added. “They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.”
Cernekee said that while he was employed at the company, the search engine took its sweet time to fix a ‘bug’ disparaging to Trump. “If you do a Google search for ‘Crippled America,’ which is Donald Trump’s book, you would get results that would show ‘Mein Kampf’ instead,” Cernekee said, referring to the book by Adolf Hitler. “I reported that, I filed a bug, I escalated it, I tried to run it up the chain. They took nine months to fix that bug.”
