Last week it was Glenn Beck attacking Google for having fomented the Egyptian revolution. Bragging that he'd "exposed" a previously unknown Google executive "as an instigator of a revolution," Beck wondered if Google was just a "shill" for America and warned his audience against conducting searches through Google.
Even by Glenn Beck's standards, it was a pretty weird conspiracy theory, but now it looks like his ideas may have found a home...in the government of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Reuters reports:
Russia blames Google for stirring Egypt unrest: report
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
"Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.
Such strong comment from one of Putin's most trusted deputies is a clear signal of growing concern among Russian hardliners about the role of the Internet in the unrest which has swept across the Arab world.
So Vladimir Putin, Hosni Mubarak, and Glenn Beck can all agree on at least one thing: Google is evil. But doesn't that tell us more about them than it does Google?