Google Inc.’s ethics are under fire today after the company recently put pressure on one of its sponsored think tanks to fire a prominent academic who was critical about Google’s dominant position in search.

The Washington-based think tank, called the New America Foundation, has reportedly received more than $21 million from Google. The organization, reported the New York Times, provoked the ire of Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet Inc. Schmidt was apparently rankled after a reading a paper written by NAF senior fellow Barry Lynn, in which Lynn praised the record $2.7 billion antitrust fine the European Union slapped on the search engine giant.

Lynn had been in charge of a part of the site called Open Markets, which focuses on the “extreme concentrations of economic and political power.” He is also the author of a 2010 book, “Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.” With this in mind, it’s difficult to understand how Google could have been surprised that this academic would be in support of the EU’s ruling, but it seems Lynn this time pushed too far.

In the blog post in question, Lynn called upon U.S. authorities to crack down on tech monopolies while giving kudos to the EU. “Google’s market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today,” wrote Lynn. “By requiring that Google give equal treatment to rival services instead of privileging its own, Vestager [European Commissioner for Competition] is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend.”

According to the report in the Times, after reading this post Schmidt contacted the president of NAF, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and demanded the dismissal of Lynn. Apparently Slaughter had told Lynn that it was time to parts ways, accusing him of “imperiling the institution as a whole,” which has only raised questions in the media relating to the gag treatment of Lynn and a breach of democratic values that Google ostensibly supports.

Lynn has now spearheaded a campaign and is asking the public to write to Google from its site Citizens against Monopoly. “When our research team at the New America Institute criticized Google’s monopoly practices, the chairman of Google’s parent company threatened to cut its funding for New America,” a post states, adding that NAF was left with no choice. The same post says Citizens against Monopoly will continue to analyze the power of all the large tech firms.

Both Slaughter and Google have issued statements denying any wronging, with Google saying the company promotes openness and transparency and Slaughter saying that Lynn had not adhered to the organization’s standards.

However, a former fellow for Open Markets disagreed, saying that Google could no longer handle any kind of dissent and that in itself only serves to validate the criticism Open Markets had made. “The problem with monopolies is not merely economic, it is that they form into a political power themselves and as Lord Acton said, power corrupts,” said the former fellow.

Image: Ged Carroll via flickr