Kent Walker | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1961 (age 62–63) Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Spouse | Diana Walsh |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) Stanford University (JD) |
Kent Walker (born 1961) [1] is an American legal executive who has served as President of Global Affairs and chief legal officer of Google & Alphabet since 2021. [2]
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2023) |
Walker was born in Palo Alto. [1] He graduated from Harvard College in 1983 [1] and received his JD from Stanford Law School. [3]
In 1990, Walker began his legal career in San Francisco at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson & Falk, now Arnold & Porter, and worked as a litigator specializing in government and public law issues. He then served 5 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the United States Department of Justice. [1]
Walker worked at various technology companies, starting in 1995 with Airtouch Communications. From 1997 to 2001 [1] he was deputy general counsel at Netscape, [4] from 2001 until 2004 he worked for Liberate Technologies, and from 2003 until 2006 [1] he was deputy general counsel at eBay. [5]
Since 2006, [1] Walker has advised Alphabet's board and management on legal and policy issues, [5] its work with governments around the world, [6] its policies for content on its various services, [7] and its philanthropic efforts. [8] Since 2021, he has been President of Global Affairs and chief legal officer at Alphabet. [2] On September 12, 2023 Walker was followed by a man dressed up as Mr. Monopoly, as he went to attend Google's antitrust trial United States v. Google LLC (2023) at federal court in Washington, D.C. [9] in which the DOJ accused Google of illegally abusing its monopoly power as the largest online search tool.
As of 2018, he served on the Harvard Board of Overseers [10] and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [11] In 2015 he was on the HeartFlow Board of Directors, [12] and advised the Mercy Corps Social Ventures Fund. [13]
In 2008, Walker introduced a "communication with care" policy at Google, which resulted in the company adopting a policy of automatic deletion of employee chat logs, a practice that became a source of legal controversy for the company during later federal antitrust lawsuits. [14] [15]
As of 2010, Walker was married to Diana Walsh, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, and they had three children. [1] As of 2022, his base salary at Google was $1,000,000, with a maximum of a $2,000,000 annual bonus, one tranche of performance stock units of $5,000,000, and one tranche of restricted stock units worth $18,000,000. [2]
FICO, originally Fair, Isaac and Company, is a data analytics company based in Bozeman, Montana, focused on credit scoring services. It was founded by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac in 1956. Its FICO score, a measure of consumer credit risk, has become a fixture of consumer lending in the United States.
Mr. Monopoly is the mascot of the board game of Monopoly. He is depicted as a portly old man with a moustache who wears a morning suit with a bowtie and top hat. In large parts of the world he is known, additionally or exclusively, as the Monopoly Man, "Rich Uncle" Pennybags, Milburn Pennybags, or the Monopoly Guy. He also appears in the related games Rich Uncle, Advance to Boardwalk, Free Parking, Don't Go to Jail, Monopoly City, Monopoly Junior, and Monopoly Deal.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit libertarian think tank founded by the political writer Fred L. Smith Jr. on March 9, 1984, in Washington, D.C., to advance principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty. CEI focuses on a number of regulatory policy issues, including business and finance, labor, technology and telecommunications, transportation, food and drug regulation, and energy and environment in which they have promoted climate change denial. Kent Lassman is the current President and CEO.
Google LLC is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Hal Ronald Varian is Chief Economist at Google and holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the School of Information. Varian is an economist specializing in microeconomics and information economics.
Christine A. Varney is an American antitrust attorney who served as the U.S. assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division for the Obama Administration and as a Federal Trade commissioner in the Clinton Administration. Since August 2011, Varney has been a partner of the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she chairs the antitrust department.
Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, its cooperation with the Israeli military on Project Nimbus targeting Palestinians and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".
Deborah Platt Majoras is the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, appointed May 11, 2004, by President George W. Bush and sworn in on August 16, 2004. President Bush had announced his intention to appoint her to the position on July 30, 2004. Majoras is a member of the Republican Party.
David Carl Drummond is an American business executive and former lawyer. He served as senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Alphabet Inc., and, formerly, for its subsidiary, Google. Prior to joining Google, in 2002, Drummond was a partner at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and then chief financial officer of software company SmartForce. Drummond retired from Alphabet on January 31, 2020.
Joshua Daniel Wright is an American economist, attorney, and former government official. Wright served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2013 to 2015. At the time of his nomination, Wright was the fourth economist to serve as an FTC commissioner. Wright was a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School between 2004 and 2023, and was the executive director of its Global Antitrust Institute (GAI). In 2023, Wright resigned from George Mason following eight allegations of sexual misconduct from former students.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Alphabet is the world's second-largest technology company by revenue, after Apple, and one of the world's most valuable companies. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent holding company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Makan Delrahim is an Iranian-American attorney and lobbyist. From 2017 to 2021, Delrahim served under President Donald Trump as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
Brendan Thomas Carr is an American lawyer who has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2017. Appointed to the position by Donald Trump, Carr previously served as the agency's general counsel and as an aide to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai. In private practice, Carr formerly worked as a telecommunications attorney at Wiley Rein.
Searchlight Capital Partners is a private equity firm based in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, with $15 billion in assets under management.
Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants or Tech Titans, are the largest IT companies in the world. The concept of Big Tech is similar to the grouping of dominant companies in other sectors. It typically refers to the Big Five United States tech companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft; or the Magnificent Seven, which includes Nvidia and Tesla. Big Tech can also include Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi (BATX).
Lina M. Khan is a British-American legal scholar of Pakistani origin currently serving as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2021. She is the youngest-ever FTC chair. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.
The New Brandeis or neo-Brandeis movement is an antitrust academic and political movement in the United States which argues that excessively centralized private power is dangerous for economical, political and social reasons. Initially called hipster antitrust by its detractors, as also referred to as the "Columbia school" or "Neo-Progressive antitrust," the movement advocates that United States antitrust law return to a broader concern with private power and its negative effects on market competition, income inequality, consumer rights, unemployment, and wage growth.
Jonathan Seth Kanter is an American antitrust attorney who has served as assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division since November 16, 2021. Prior to this, Kanter worked as an antitrust attorney at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and in private practice.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on October 20, 2020. The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on January 24, 2023. The suit accuses Google of illegally monopolizing the advertising technology (adtech) market in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The suit is separate from the DOJ antitrust case launched in 2020 that accuses Google of an illegal monopoly in the search engine market.
Media related to Kent Walker at Wikimedia Commons