Google has a knife that it holds over the jugular vein of all internet publications that depend on advertising revenue.  It holds a dominant position in the digital advertising market and could, by denying ad revenue to any digital publication it targets, drive that voice out of business.

Now, according to information from Project Veritas, a very large number of Google employees are demanding that Google drive Breitbart.com out of business.  Alana Mastrangelo reports at Breitbart:

An internal Google petition "to end Google's business with Breitbart" was recently leaked to Project Veritas. The petition — which over 1,000 Google employees have signed — calls for labeling Breitbart News as "prohibited content" to block the news outlet from "all Google-served ads."

A Google insider says that a petition has been circulated among Google employees, calling on banning Breitbart News from Google's advertising networks, in order to cut off the news platform from ad revenue, according to a recent report by Project Veritas.

This is nothing new, and it is not exactly a bottom-up effort in its origin:

Last year, emails leaked exclusively to Breitbart News revealed a similar story, in which a group of Google employees — with encouragement from the tech giant's director of monetization — had begun plotting the downfall of the website through removing Breitbart News from Google's market-dominating ad services.

This should be an obvious danger to free speech.  True, Google is not the government, so it may claim that the First Amendment does not apply to it.  But Google also enjoys government protection:

"This is important, because Google claims protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act," noted O'Keefe, "Basically, they say they are impartial publishers of content and therefore, not liable for any content they publish, but this document shows they are anything but impartial."

If Google drives Breitbart of out of existence, American Thinker will be on the follow-up list.  And you will be able to read only news and commentary that Google thinks you ought to see.

Today is the White House "Social Media Summit," in which the suppression of conservative voices is to be considered.  Already, the left-wing establishment media are disparaging the meeting with remarkable vehemence, almost as if they want no escape from the media suppression Google radicals seem to want to implement against their conservative competitors.

Graphic credit: Pixabay.