Google: now the party that has to be
held back from doing unethical stuff by…the military?Other leaders had similar reactions. “My concerns are raised when I’m advised to not disclose what seems to be a contractual relationship to the press,” one of the top managers at the pathology center, Col. Edward Stevens, told Olson. Stevens told Olson that giving Google access to this information without a competitive bid could result in litigation from the company’s competitors. Stevens asked: “Does this need to go through an open-source bid?”
…
In exchange for scanning and digitizing the slide collection at its own expense, Google sought “exclusive access” to the data for at least four years.
…
When Google was not selected for the pilot project, the company went above the JPC leaders’ heads. Google claimed in a letter to Pentagon leaders that the company had been unfairly excluded from “full and open competition.” In that August 2021 letter, Google argued that the nation’s security was at stake. It asked the DOD to “consider allowing Google Cloud” and other providers to compete to ensure the “nation’s ability to compete with China in biotechnology.”