The origin story Google doesn’t want you to hear… How we fell afoul of Silicon Valley’s censors… Introducing Legacy Research… In the mailbag: “Thank you for standing up to these overblown egos…”
Everything you type into Google’s search window… every email you compose in Gmail… everywhere you go with your smartphone… every video you upload to YouTube…
…Google is watching, monitoring, and recording.
The company’s business model is to gather as much data on you as possible… and then sell it to advertisers and political strategists.
This includes your gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, and even political affiliations.
(Do you search for conservative news sites? Do you donate to the NRA? Have you supported liberal causes? Do you read the “wrong” kind of newsletters?)
If you use Google Maps or an Android smartphone, Google also tracks your minute-by-minute location using your phone’s GPS.
If you’re like 90% of all internet users, you use Google’s search engine every day to find stuff online.
This makes Google the gateway of information for the modern world.
Meanwhile, more than 80% of smartphone owners use Android.
And Google owns YouTube, the world’s most popular online video sharing platform… Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser… and Gmail, the world’s second most popular email service.
It also accounts for over 37% of the online advertising spending in the U.S. – the biggest chunk of market share of any one company.
And recently, Google has moved beyond just tracking and monitoring your digital life… and has taken up a new role as online censor.
As we told you in a private message last week, we’ve fallen afoul of Google’s censors.
Earlier this year, Google banned all marketing from Bill Bonner’s, Doug Casey’s, Jeff Clark’s, and Teeka Tiwari’s newsletter publishing firms.
And that’s a big deal, not just for us as a business… but also for you as a reader. Here’s Bill…
We’re the only real alternative press not supported by advertisers. Unlike the mainstream press, which has to be loyal to its advertisers, we’re loyal only to our readers.
Our readers pay us directly. If they don’t like our ideas, they can stop reading. That makes it a win-win. For us to be successful, our readers have to be successful, too.
Now, these legendary newsletter men have come together to create an alliance of independent minds – Legacy Research Group.
By joining forces, they figure they have a better chance of standing up to the censors and preserving their legacy of independent ideas and research.
Google deems some of our marketing “sensationalist.”
And it says some of our more bearish forecasts – say, for a stock market collapse or an economic recession – are too frightening for its users.
The company has also taken aim at our editorial content. For example, it took issue with an essay Bill wrote in his Diary e-letter.
It’s about how the feds have hollowed out parts of Baltimore – where Bill has lived and worked, on and off, for the past 40 years – with their win-lose deals. You can read that essay here. (We refused to take it down.)
Google is a private company. So it can “de-platform” us – or any other publisher – if it wants to.
In 1994, Bill Clinton had just won his second term… Michael Jordan was the world’s biggest sports star… and Forrest Gump was a box-office smash.
It’s also the year when two Stanford University PhD students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, created the first “web crawler” (also known as a “spider”).
Up until then, if you wanted to index web pages to make them easier to find, you had to do it manually. Brin and Page’s web crawler did it automatically.
It moved from website to website and then reported back on what each website was about… how often it was updated… who linked to it… where it linked to… and thousands of other details.
Brin and Page went on to cofound Google…
Their crawler is still at the core of Google’s search. And Page and Brin’s company went on to become the third most valuable corporation in the world.
But that’s only part of the story.
As we’ll show you in these pages, although Google is widely seen as part of the private sector, it’s been working hand-in-hand with the Deep State to create a mass surveillance society in America.
And its true origin is not as a Silicon Valley start-up… but as part of an ambitious plan by government spooks to track individuals and groups in cyberspace.
It even received early-stage funding from two of the most powerful spy agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).
More on that in tomorrow’s issue… including how these agencies have been more successful in tracking and monitoring us online than they ever dreamed of.
Last week, we announced our plan to fight what one dear reader calls “the cabal of everything.” Read on to hear what your fellow readers have to say about this new alliance of independent minds…
I want you all to know that I applaud your desire to remain independent and unbiased by groups or organizations who want to influence your newsletters. That is why I am a subscriber and will continue to be one. – Lorne B. (Legacy Research member)
Many thanks for this important update. You guys in the new Legacy Research Group are all legends – men of integrity, vision, courage, and decency who exhibit true professionalism.
Your various subscription services all provide excellent value for the money. And you uniquely enable the “common man” to make investment decisions that would otherwise only be available to the wealthy elite…
You have my full support and respect. Your various performances over the years in identifying profitable investments with calculated risks is on record and cannot be denied.
As educator Peter Drucker famously stated: “The only test of management that matters is performance,” and you guys have performed very well over many years. From a very ordinary (but also decent and grateful) UK citizen. – John S. (Legacy Research member)
Thank you so much for not caving in to the requests of those trying to censor what you write in your investment publications.
You are the only way we can get investment insights without there being a kickback to some advisor or company. Kudos to all the groups in the new Legacy Research! – Barbara N. (Legacy Research member)
I’m in. Truth and/or interpretation of hard-to-come-by facts is worth reading. – Tim C. (Legacy Research member)
Thank you so much for inviting me to the Legacy Research Group. Actually, there is honor. I’ve been following Doug and Bill’s teams for a few decades now, and I know they kept independent – a truly astonishing accomplishment! – Vlad T. (Legacy Research member)
Go for it! I’m looking forward to The Daily Cut and fully support its mission. I have lifetime subscriptions to the publications of all four publishers behind the Legacy Research Group, and certainly have no plans to end any of them. – Art M. (Legacy Research member)
Good to see the Four Amigos are joining forces against the cabal of everything. – Brian F. (Legacy Research member)
Thank you for standing up to these overblown egos. I closed down my Facebook page because I am so disgusted with their lack of ethics.
I’m in Australia and believe me, we are walking closer and closer towards a Police State. Something has to give… In the meantime, we desperately need ethical publications. Thank you all for everything. – Patricia M. (Legacy Research member)
I have been a subscriber to Bill Bonner’s publishing groups as well as some of Doug’s newsletters since the 1980s – before there was an established distribution platform known as the Internet.
I watched Bill, et al., grow using snail mail. I even attended a Blanchard Symposium in New Orleans in the 1980s when the so-called gold bugs were popular.
I may not have agreed with everything I heard over the years, but I was open to listening and learning. I applaud what Doug, Chris, and the Legacy Research Group are doing. Count me in. – Richard A. (Legacy Research member)
Dear Bill, Doug, Teeka, and Jeff, I am Cuban, and I’ve been following your work since the first article I saw about you about a year ago, with the few minutes of expensive internet I have in my country.
You are doing a magnificent job keeping people well-informed and helping them have more freedom and lucidity to make crucial decisions in their lives. My applause for your strong response, and for not complying with the bullies of Facebook and the other “owners” of the media.
I support your efforts and considers them laudable. And I’ll gladly wait for my everyday “Real Stuff” with The Daily Cut. Thanks for that! – Alejandro F. (Legacy Research member)
Thanks to everyone who wrote in. Keep it coming…
Should we have taken down Bill’s essay… and let Google decide what we can and can’t say online? Send your thoughts to feedback@legacyresearch.com.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
August 20, 2018
Lisbon, Portugal
P.S. Remember to check out the letter we sent you last week.
It explains in more detail why we refused to cave into Google’s demands… and why Bill, Doug, Teeka, and Jeff have joined forces to push back against this new breed of censorship.