I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to fowlerpower's comment:
> The thing is that Google has absolutely gone down questionable path from their early days.
And as for the article, it says:
> The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999.
So yes, Google did contribute. But so did Schmidt and his family foundation. I think this is mostly on Schmidt personally rather than Google as a corporation.
I think they are indistinguishable here. Google and Schmidt both gave money, Schmidt is the executive chairman of google, so there's no distance between them.
It's pretty disingenuous to consider Schmidt's personal conduct and wealth as separate of Google. As Alphabet's board chairman, he's the third in charge of the company, and is usually the one conveying Google's political position to the leadership of various countries. And a significant portion of his wealth is either cash from Google or stock that's still invested in Google.
The primary difference in it being his personal action, is that there's a lot less regulation governing his use of it.