Google just got exactly what Google asked for. Here's how Gmail will change as a result

This is the short version of the story of Google's request for the Federal Election Commission to rule on its plan: to allow certain political entities to send unsolicited emails to Gmail users without fear to be sent to spam.

Never mind that thousands of Gmail users who heard about the proposal wrote to the FEC to oppose the idea (record and near-unanimous opposition, according to an FEC commissioner).

Frankly, it's not supposed to.

At a meeting last week, the FEC approved what was probably -- well, if not an early conclusion, probably the punter's outcome: an advisory opinion that told Google, yes , he can go ahead with his plan.

Why? Because the law is the law. And the law is apparently pretty clear here.

In a 4-1 vote (with one abstention), the commission, which is evenly split with three Republicans and three Democrats, said Google's program would not amount to campaign contributions ineligible business cases, which was really the only sticking point.

As The Washington Post later summarized:

"The regulator's bipartisan approval paves the way for Google to implement the program, which would disable Gmail's ordinary spam filters for participating candidates and political committees, leaving individual users to manually tag emails. unwanted emails.

The pilot program, for any FEC-registered sender whose emails do not contain illegal content or other material prohibited by Gmail's terms of service, is expected to last approximately six months, although the timing of its implementation was not immediately clear. "

Here's a quick recap:

In April, some Republican politicians complained to the FEC that Google was spamming Republican fundraising emails in Gmail at a higher rate than emails from Democrats, and that the disparity amounted to "contributions in-kind illegal businesses" to Democrats. In June, Google CEO Sundar Pichai came to Washington and presented top Republicans with what amounted to a 10-word plan: what if we don't send any political emails to spam? In July, Google requested this advisory opinion; If Republicans were right that letting some political emails skip spam might constitute an in-kind campaign contribution, letting more politicians also skip spam might have been construed as even more illegal contributions. In early August, thousands of Gmail users commented on the proposal, but to no avail.

The ironic elephant in the room, in my opinion, is that even if Google got what it wanted from the FEC, it's entirely possible that literally no one wants that solution.

Gmail users have made their objections clear, although they have generally not provided the FEC with a legal basis to reject the idea.

Google itself might not want to be involved at all, except that its hand was more or less forced by Republican objections.

And yet, even Republican leaders don't seem appeased by Google's action here, as the Post reported that they plan to oppose Google's idea, even if the business is launched. -before trying it.

"Google and its algorithms have given a clear advantage to Democrats' fundraising efforts, allowing Republicans to raise millions of dollars less than they should be able to," says a draft. letter from the Republican National Senate Committee, calling Google's plan "unacceptable...It's coming too late and it's too risky for campaigns."

So where does this leave us? Probably need a better solution.

No one wants spam, yet we live in a country where political speech is (thankfully) protected. This is yet another circumstance where the law simply hasn't held you back...