The fall has been a series of non-endorsements, sort of like the college football season:
- The Netroots primary delivered no endorsement. Edwards leads, but his lead over Barack Obama is so small as to be meaningless.
- Al Gore never made an endorsement. His embrace of Wall Street and Silicon Valley has been so complete he’s practically a Republican.
There is one very important endorsement that still might happen, and which could prove decisive.
I’m not talking here of some appearance by Eric Schmidt, who has hosted the company’s talks with candidates at the company offices. (Ron Paul’s interview drew the most interest.) I’m talking about an endorsement by founders Larry Page and/or Sergey Brin.
Such an endorsement would be powerful far beyond the money involved. Because it would be based on Internet Values.
Google’s business practice has always been in line with open source and
Internet values. It has tried, not always successfully, to walk the
walk as well as talk the talk. Every voter under 40 no doubt intuits
this.
A Google endorsement would, and frankly should, be based on Google’s
self-interest. Which candidate would do more for an open Internet, for
open source, for open inquiry, for open networking? Which candidate is
most open to new ideas?
If there is no endorsement from Page and Brin, the Google endorsement
will go to Obama by default. That’s important to note. A
non-endorsement in this case would be a tepid endorsement.
But a real endorsement, of anyone, could at this point in the process prove decisive.
Will we get one?
