President Obama is all for demonizing large American corporations that avoid taxes through income shifting…except when those large American corporations are dumping money in his campaign coffers.

Bloomberg is running a big story on Google’s lucrative use of the very loopholes Team Obama wants to eliminate:

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” — helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”

The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent.

Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax. (See an interactive graphic on Google’s tax strategy here.)

Will the subject come up tonight in Palo Alto, where Obama will attend a mega-bucks fund-raiser hosted by a Google executive? (hat tip: reader James)

To be clear, my beef isn’t with legal income shifting. My beef is with Team Obama’s selective bashing/targeting of companies that engage in such practices.

Cue the sound of crickets chirping:

President Obama’s motorcade is scheduled to skim past the Stanford campus this evening as Obama returns to the Bay Area today for two Democratic fundraisers.

According to the White House, Obama will land in San Francisco at 3 p.m., after which he will head to the Palo Alto home of Marissa Mayer ’97 M.S. ’99, a vice president at Google. There, he will attend a $30,000-per-person fundraiser for 50 Democrats, according to media reports.

By way of Moonbattery, it’s time once again for “Fun with Google’s ‘auto-complete’ feature.”

If you’re a fan of the president, you might want to just turn it off:

That really happens. Go try it yourself. I hear Chris Matthews uses it as his version of “thinking about baseball” when he wants to stave off a premature Obamagasm.

Google lets Joe Biden off a little lighter, but not much:

If you still count yourself among the rapidly diminishing number of Hope & Change Kool Aid drinkers, you might find the Rainbows, Gumdrops & Unicorns withdrawal somewhat uncomfortable — so here’s a little cyber Methadone to help quell the shakes and take you back to the good old days:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’m a little punchy after a day of listening to Elena Kagan doing her best impression of the love child of Betty Friedan and Nathan Thurm, so I hope I’m reading this story wrong, but knowing Google, I highly doubt it:

Google plans to pay gay employees more

Google is set to begin covering a cost that gay and lesbian employees must pay when their partners receive domestic partner health benefits, according to a report in the New York Times.

The cost is largely to compensate these workers for an extra tax that heterosexual married couples do not pay. The increase will be retroactive to the beginning of the year, the newspaper said.

Google is not the first large company to make up for the extra tax, the Times reported, adding that Google’s move could inspire its Silicon Valley competitors to follow suit, as they compete for the same talent.

If that doesn’t seem like discrimination, let’s flip it on its ear: I own a company that employs both caucasians and minorities. I put out a memo announcing that I’ve discovered that my white employees are paying higher property taxes, so in order to make it “fair” to everyone, I’m going to start paying white employees more so they can cover their extra property taxes.

Jesse Jackson would be knocking on my door in 3…2…1…

Since it’s illegal to ask an employee (or interviewee) to divulge his or her sexual preference, how exactly is Google finding out who’s straight and who’s gay so they know who to pay more?

The only remaining question is this: How many straight Google employees will go all “Chuck & Larry” just to make Google pay them a little extra money? Hopefully all of them.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Last year on June 6th Google celebrated the 25th birthday of Tetris:

On June 6th the year before that, Google recognized the birthday of Spanish painter Diego Velasquez:

But today, June 6, 2010… nothing:

Google is purposefully ignoring a big event, aren’t they? Don’t they know that this is the 77th anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in movie theater? For shame.

*****

Today of course is the 66th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and we don’t need Google to salute all those who helped liberate Europe and keep the Nazis from their goal of global domination. The fight for freedom is ongoing, and we must never waiver so that the sacrifices of these heroes will never have been in vain.

Many websites and blogs you might look at today that mention D-Day will post Ronald Reagan’s 40th anniversary speech in Normandy, and in the spirit of conformity, I’m going to do the same. It was a great speech and from the heart and not the prompter:

And of course there’s this classic: “How today’s media would have reported D-Day”:

Update: Bing certainly remembered that it was the D-Day anniversary when Google didn’t — or didn’t want to.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

But don’t complain too loudly about it.

You know how Rahm Emanuel likes to exploit a crisis…and the last thing we need is another Email Czar.

***

Tip: If you go to igoogle, you should be able to access your gmail.

Breaking this afternoon, via Information Week:

The people of China no longer have access to YouTube, a company spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

“We understand there are reports of users being unable to access YouTube within the People’s Republic of China,” the spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. “We are looking into the matter and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible.”

The spokesperson offered no explanation as to why the video-sharing site had become inaccessible, but a BBC news report indicates that Chinese authorities blocked access to YouTube because it hosted videos of Chinese soldiers beating monks and other Tibetans.

A Chinese government spokesman told the BBC that China is not afraid of the Internet, but declined to confirm whether YouTube had been blocked.

The Chinese government has been anxious to avoid a repeat of last year’s riots in Tibet, particularly on March 10, which marked the 50th anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, which forced the Dalai Lama to flee the country.

Last year, during the March riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, China blocked access to YouTube.

At the time, YouTube offered the very same statement it offered this year: “We understand there are reports of users being unable to access YouTube within the People’s Republic of China. We are looking into the matter and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible.”

You’ll recall back in 2006, YouTube parent company Google succumbed to China’s censorship demands in order to obtain a license for its search engine. The company “agreed to omit Web content that the country’s government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials…Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted ‘don’t be evil’ as a motto. But management believes it’s a worthwhile sacrifice.”

Will they sacrifice again?

Flashback:

The China-Google protest logo album

More China-Google protest logos

Major media companies are increasingly lobbying Google to elevate their expensive professional content within the search engine’s undifferentiated slush of results.

Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they’re newly upset that Google’s algorithm penalizes paid content.

“You should not have a system,” one content executive said, “where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately.”

Last November John Kosner, ESPN’s digital-media senior VP, renewed the charge at a meeting of Google’s Publishers Advisory Council, a small, invitation-only group for professional publishers to pow-wow confidentially with the search giant. Members include BusinessWeek, ESPN, Hearst, Meredith, The New York Times, Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal. “This wasn’t the first time that it had been raised, but John certainly put a bright spotlight on it,” said one person in attendance.

Then in January, Martin Nisenholtz, New York Times Co. senior VP-digital operations, got up at the annual Online Publishers Association summit in Florida, an event closed to the press, to blast both the algorithm and the results presentation on the screen.

He’d just run a search for Gaza, which had been at war with Israel since Dec. 27. Google returned links to outdated BBC stories, Wikipedia entries and even an anti-Semitic YouTube video well before coverage by the Times, which had an experienced reporter covering the war from inside Gaza itself.

Search results for “Gaza” on March 20 began with two Wikipedia links, a March 19 BBC report, two video clips of unclear origin, the CIA World Factbook, a Guardian report and, most strikingly, a link to Gaza-related messages on Twitter.

“Parasites?” New media sources including blogs and Twitter increasingly provide original content and news-breaking ahead of the newspapers. Their commentary and analysis on everything from the war to the financial meltdown are often ahead of the curve and more informative. They have threatened the dinosaur monopoly, and now the MSM needs a Google rescue plan.

I don’t often agree with Michael Wolff, but this is exactly right:

Not everyone supports the publishers’ push. “It’s the plaintive cry of people who have lost their monopoly trying to scrounge a little of it back,” said Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair columnist and founder of Newser, which aggregates and links news from around the web. “Sometimes it’s true that you’d rather get what The New York Times has to say about something rather than a host of bloggers. But more interestingly it’s not always true. And it is in fact less and less true.”

Daniel Sung at Tech Digest lambastes the big media lobbyists:

Much of the Google’s search algorithm is based on how many links a page has. So, the more popular and better written or designed something is, the higher ranking it has. It doesn’t make any difference who you are. If your content is wonderful then your efforts, your work and your genius will be recognised.

If I want a broadsheet’s representation of the news then I’ll go and buy a newspaper, or I’ll wait to see what Moira Stewart has to say about it later. If I want to be entertained, if I want to read around or if I just want a more human view on events, I’ll take a look at the web.

The really sad part of all of this is that apparently Google is considering changing they way they do things. They’ve held closed door meetings with the big publishers and plan to do so again. If they altered their algorithm and pandered to the cries of the publishers, then the internet would change in the most perverse and profound way in its 20-year existence. If you take away its democracy, you take away its very ethos and the web becomes an evolution of print rather than a new media in its own right.

Why on Earth should Google allow the big publishers the right to take the internet as their own? They have no more claim to it than anyone else and, as some of the slowest off the mark and it’s least understanding users, I’d argue they actually have less. They never link to other articles when the rest of the community links to everyone else, even if that means ignoring the original source.

Just like the record industry, they need to spend less time whining that their business models are falling apart and more time learning how to use the new world to their advantage. Nobody owes them a living.

Keep an eye on this. If the newspapers don’t get their way, I have a feeling Nancy Pelosi is going to step in.

The thing is, as tech bloggers have noted, it takes more energy to power black pages than white ones.

Yes, to raise awareness of the need to conserve energy, Google caused its users to use more energy than they normally would.

But hey: Google Cares.

Next up: Google apparently plans to help the enviros flood Capitol Hill with phone calls:

A group of environmental activists has enlisted Google to help flood the congressional switchboard with one million phone calls on Earth Day urging lawmakers to enact eco-friendly measures.

“We’re really excited about this because Congress keeps saying they don’t hear from the American public on climate change,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, which bills itself as an eco-activism group connecting some 17,000 organizations in 174 countries. “The [presidential] candidates are not being asked about climate change. Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity that we’ve ever faced.”

Rogers said her group is finalizing talks with Internet giant Google to coordinate online advertisements and other publicity measures in support of the calls. Details of the arrangement are still being worked out and are scheduled to be released on April 14…

Rogers said Earth Day Network is planning events in eight cities and has recruited 1,000 student volunteers on 1,000 college campuses across the country to celebrate Earth Day, which it calls “the largest secular civic event in the world.”

Secular? Hardly. These people belong to a cult–a cult that fewer and fewer sane public officials are willing to fight.

For sanity, check Sen. Jim Inhofe’s blog.

He’s an endangered species.

Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our analysis of the link structure of the Web” such mischief would instead “typically return commentary, discussions, and articles” about the tactic itself.

Indeed, a search on Saturday of “miserable failure” on Google leads to a now-outdated BBC News article from 2003 about the “miserable failure” search, rather than the previous first result, President Bush’s portal at whitehouse.gov/president.

Such gamesmanship has been termed “Google bombing,” and is not unique to President Bush, or even politics. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, was linked to the search “waffles,” while other Google bombs have been elaborate jokes or personal vendettas.

Writing on the Google blog, Matt Cutts, the head of the Google’s Webspam team, said that Google bombs had not “been a very high priority for us.” But he added: “Over time, we’ve seen more people assume that they are Google’s opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Google-bombed queries. That’s not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception.”

Some Google bombs haven’t been fixed yet:

Despite the changes by Google, some other Google bombs are still operative. A search for “French military victories” still produces a first result that says, “Your search — French military victories — did not match any documents.” Click there and your find a mockup of a Google search page asking the question “Did you mean: French military defeats.”

Soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets based at the Basra Palace base said they had considered suing Google Earth if they were injured by mortar rounds that had been directed on the camp by the aerial footage.

“Even if they did blank out the areas where we are based it is a bit after the horse has bolted as the terrorist now have the maps and know exactly where we eat, sleep and go to the toilet,” one soldier said.

Like Bryan said last week:

These are the people who are going to build a nuclear Google bomb and drop it on the GOP? For some reason, I feel less threatened by this than I guess I should. Their cyber nuke will probably pack all the punch of that North Korean dud.

Nevertheless, it’s good to expose tactics like these. It takes a devious mind to come up with a convoluted way to rig Google search terms, tie that to Google ads and hope to move democracy your way via online hypnosis. What would such a mind do from inside Congress, or the White House?

Let’s not find out, ok?

***

Other stupid, left-wing Google bomb campaigns:

Google bombing “The Path to 9/11″

Google bombing Bush and “miserable failure”

Google bombing Rick Santorum

Google bombing me!

***

I missed an e-mail from John Hawkins, a friend of this blog from its very beginnings, alerting me to a conservative effort to counter the left-wing Google bombers. Might as well try to fight back if you can.

Go join John’s campaign here.

Google’s PAC will be run by a five-person board of directors who will be guided by the recommendations of an advisory committee made up of Google employees. It will raise its funds through voluntary donations from staff.

But judging from the fact that in the past Google employees have been involved with leftwing groups such as MoveOn.org, it will be very interesting to see where that cash is headed.

As noted last year:

Google employees gave $207,650 to federal candidates for last year’s elections, up from just $250 in 2000 when it was still a start-up. And 98% went to Democrats, the biggest share among top tech donors, a new USA TODAY campaign finance analysis shows.

More on the Google/MoveOn.org alliance from the WSJ here.

Remember the Google corporate motto? “Don’t be evil:”

Our informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users – as well we should. But being “a different kind of company” means more than the products we make and the business we’re building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees.

The Google Code of Conduct is the code by which we put those values into practice. This document is meant for public consumption, but its most important audience is within our own walls. This code isn’t merely a set of rules for specific circumstances but an intentionally expansive statement of principles meant to inform all our actions; we expect all our employees, temporary workers, consultants, contractors, officers and directors to study these principles and do their best to apply them to any and all circumstances which may arise.

The core message is simple: Being Googlers means striving toward the highest possible standard of ethical business conduct. This is a matter as much practical as ethical; we hire great people who work hard to build great products, but our most important asset by far is our reputation as a company that warrants our users’ faith and trust. That trust is the foundation upon which our success and prosperity rests, and it must be re-earned every day, in every way, by every one of us.

So please do read this code, and then read it again, and remember that as our company evolves, The Google Code of Conduct will evolve as well. Our core principles won’t change, but the specifics might, so a year from now, please read it a third time. And always bear in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to do everything we can to incorporate these principles into our work, and our lives.

Google Inc. (GOOG) snapped up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion Monday in deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a leading role in the online video revolution. The all-stock acquisition unites one of the Internet’s marquee companies with one of its rapidly rising stars.

The price makes YouTube, a still-unprofitable startup, by far the most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history.

Although some cynics have questioned YouTube’s staying power, Google is betting that the popular Web site will provide it an increasingly lucrative marketing hub as more viewers and advertisers migrate from television to the Internet.

“We are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer.

Flashback: Google’s Democrats

Google employees gave $207,650 to federal candidates for last year’s elections, up from just $250 in 2000 when it was still a start-up. And 98% went to Democrats, the biggest share among top tech donors, a new USA TODAY campaign finance analysis shows.

Flashback: Google News – Not so fair and balanced

Flashback: LGF – Google News turns us down again

Flashback: LGF – Google News High Standards, Exhibit N for Nazi