According to the wall street journal, as part of its anti-trust battle plan, Google has conducted an academic influence campaign in order to have support for practices that may face regalatory scrutiny and impact public policy that may affect its market dominance. Researchers reveal, only in some cases, that Google was backling their research. According to WSJ, invdividuals representingGoogle in Washington compiled wishlists of academic papers with titles, abstracts, and budgets and then searched for possible authors.According to Google officals, [they] "identify work that resonates with a position they already have, and then amplify that work."I checked twitter for some of the reader feedback, here are some highlights

2000 @Google: "Don't be evil"2017 Google: "Pay academics to shill for us & not declare it"#researchintegrity #COI https://t.co/KrhWsVAGyB pic.twitter.com/Tc5dDlZWjP

— Matt Hodgkinson (@mattjhodgkinson) July 11, 2017

Interesting to know how Scholar treats these research papers... https://t.co/lms1TOTlax

— Eyal Eshet (@eyaleshet) July 12, 2017