Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Just Compared Google to Nazis

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

Latitude Festival - Day 3
SOUTHWOLD, ENGLAND - JULY 18: Thom Yorke performs on day 3 of Latitude Festival at Henham Park Estate on July 18, 2015 in Southwold, England. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
Photograph by Dave J Hogan — Getty Images

Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke recently had some pretty strong comments about tech giant Google, which owns Youtube (GOOG).

In an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica, the rock star likened the company to the Nazis when discussing tech companies and streaming services.

“I don’t have the solution to these problems. I only know that they’re making money with the work of loads of artists who don’t get any benefit from it,” Yorke said in the interview, as translated by Vulture. “People continue to say that this is an era where music is free, cinema is free. It’s not true.”

He added, “The creators of services make money—Google, YouTube. A huge amount of money, by trawling, like in the sea—they take everything there is. ‘Oh, sorry, was that yours? Now it’s ours. No, no, we’re joking—it’s still yours.'”

And then Yorke compared them to the Third Reich: “They’ve seized control of it—it’s like what the Nazis did during the second world war,” he said. “Actually, it’s like what everyone was doing during the war, even the English—stealing the art of other countries. What difference is there?”

This isn’t the first time Yorke has attacked music streaming services and other tech companies. Three years ago, he called Spotify the “last desperate fart of a dying corpse,” according to Vulture.

Fortune has reached out to YouTube and Yorke’s public relations team for a response. Google declined to comment.