Most Americans might remember it as the time Google blacked out its home page. But for Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Internet's largest protest took a more personal turn. On a frigid day in January 2012, Internet activists stormed his Manhattan offices.
Like Google, the demonstrators contended that a pair of controversial bills then barreling toward approval in Congress would stifle online speech and access to information. They urged Schumer to drop his support for the legislation, known in the House and Senate by their respective acronyms, SOPA and PIPA.
The activists were losing the battle ahead of a crucial Senate vote. But as the protests grew, key lawmakers began changing their minds. Within 48 hours, Schumer and other co-sponsors abandoned PIPA.
The protests signaled the Internet's growing political clout. This constituency was vocal, well-connected and a powerful base of potential support — particularly in New York City, the scene of a fast-rising tech boom.
"Google is one of our fastest-growing employers," Schumer said in a recent interview.
Behind Google, such companies as AOL, eBay and LinkedIn are hiring up a storm in New York, says executive search firm Cook Associates. So are Yelp, Pandora and Etsy, the online craft store. WeWork, which offers shared working space for start-ups in 12 locations around New York, is one of the city's biggest landlords, Schumer said.
Economic studies show the tech industry grew twice as fast in New York over the past decade as it did in Silicon Valley. Spurring that rise are tax credits that allow start-ups to operate tax-free for 10 years. Today, more than 327,000 people work in New York tech, advertising and media,industry data shows, reflecting a 23 percent increase from 2006. The financial services workforce in New York shrank by 3 percent in the same period.
A force behind all this growth is Schumer, who meets with tech business leaders three to four times a year and has become a quiet but reliable Washington ally to the industry. A Senate veteran with a reputation for brokering deals, Schumer courts start-ups even as he grapples with broader concerns such as health care and the federal budget. His relationship with Silicon Valley dates to the 1990s, when he began making trips out West to meet Yahoo and Oracle executives.
These days, his focus has shifted to homegrown ventures. "One day, I'd love to see us rival Silicon Valley," Schumer said. "We're probably where Silicon Valley was 20 years ago."
Tech, it seems, lights up most every area of his work. This year, he called on the Federal Aviation Administration to fast-track its rules for commercial drones. He urged Apple and other companies to develop strict policies to protect sensitive consumer health data — an area that is largely ungoverned by federal privacy law. In July, he pressed the nation's telecom regulators to write aggressive rules to make sure that broadband providers couldn't unfairly discriminate against Web sites. And he continued to act as a leading negotiator on immigration, a high-profile issue for tech companies that want to hire more skilled foreign
workers.
All the tech talk is no accident, Schumer said. "For all the years I've been a senator and congressman, jobs in New York has been a key thing for me," he said. "With financial services having its trouble, what is going to be the future of New York in terms of young people getting good jobs? Clearly, tech is our future."
New York isn't just a hotbed of start-ups. It's also a place where many of the country's largest tech businesses try out new services. Just last week, Amazon started testing same-day bike delivery in New York in a bid to shave hours off shipping times.
Some tech-oriented companies have run up against New York institutions. As in other cities, Uber, the the app-based alternative car service, has battled the taxi industry in New York. Aereo, an online video service, made headlines this summer when the Supreme Court, ruling in a case that originated in New York, said the company's system of redistributing network content over the Internet violated copyright law. And in May, the Web-based room-sharing company Airbnb resolved a months-long dispute with New York state's attorney general, agreeing to hand over data about its hosts in the city.
What's happened in New York in recent years mirrors the way California's tech industry has shaken up the national economy. Both areas have seen the rapid growth of culturally and economically powerful businesses that are shaping how people around the country shop, learn, play and create.
