Google Spends Record Amount on Lobbying | Hacker News Reader

Google Spends Record Amount on Lobbying

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Some good will come of this I think. Much of what Google would want to lobby for, the rest of us in software would. Industries that make a fraction of what software does spend so much more on lobbying and reap the benefits, its absurd that software companies have not followed suit.

I certainly am not naive enough to think all of Google's aims will be noble here, but I suspect they'll be closer to it than Apple or Microsoft.

Strongly agree

I think this is true, but some of the stuff that annoys Google (like California's labor laws) they might want to change in a way that you and I would disagree with.

So it is nice to have someone more technologically astute lobbying the Government, but their perspective as the 800lb gorilla with data 'issues' might incline them more toward a 'responsible use of data collected across products' rather than 'customers must be informed and opt-in prior to any data use' type policies.

Back in the way back times when crytpo code was considered a munition, I was participating in efforts to convince the Clinton Whitehouse that it was impractical to impede US companies from putting strong encryption into their products which Italian companies had the same tools at their fingertips as we did. One of the unsung heroes of that time is John Gage, who probably had a lot of trips back and forth to D.C. What I found discouraging is that for every well motivated suggestion, we would get a couple of less savory people jumping on board because it enabled some of their activities. Very, very challenging to propose laws or regulations that bad actors can't turn to their advantage some how. Depressing really.

Notably the Ars Technica article[1] dug up a CNN article[2] from January saying that $4 million of that $5 million was just on SOPA/PIPA.

In any case, the Public Knowledge guy is right. You can't set the expectation that good guys (which might not include google for you) don't participate in the broken system and also expect good things to happen. Just like with software patents.

(actually, lobbying may be a really good use of the reported increased revenue Mozilla is now receiving, though it may be difficult for their more distributed decision making process to advocate on more controversial topics. On many open web important issues, though, I would trust them to have a clear voice and do honest lobbying, and a few million should be easily covered by that increase).

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/04/google-on-track-...

[2] http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/25/technology/sopa_pipa_lobby/i...

It's a record for Google, and a comparatively high amount for a tech company. But $5M certainly isn't a notable lobbying expense in Washington.

>But $5M certainly isn't a notable lobbying expense in Washington

Do you have a reference for that?

Ars seems to say the opposite:

>From January to March of this year, Google spent over $5 million on lobbying, nearly matching its entire 2010 lobbying budget of $5.2 million. If the company maintains this pace, it will likely earn itself a spot as one of the top ten spending entities for the year as logged by Open Secrets. Comparing this same rate with 2011 figures, Google would outspend the entire tobacco industry ($17.07 million), the combined spending of JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup ($18.67 million), but would be just barely behind the combined budgets of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Merck ($20.685 million). For comparison, Apple spent only $500,000 for the same 2012 quarter; Microsoft spent $1.79 million.

Weren't you just responding to me in another thread earlier today warning about the dangers of extrapolating single data points? They didn't do this last year, why would you expect them to next year? Lobbying expenses (presumably directed primarily at SOPA in this case) are bursty. If there's no legilation on the docket that you care about, you don't pay your lobbyists to do anything.

I had time to look some of this up. Those numbers are pretty spun. Here's the list of the biggest spenders at Open Secrets: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2011&i...

The bottom of the list (#20) is at $12M. I don't know where $5 would put you but it's no doubt in the long tail; it doesn't even register.

You just accused ArsTechnica of spinning numbers(a serious accusation) and you yourself are comparing Google's spending in just 1 Quarter (4 months) to numbers for a whole year (12 months) ? Wow.

Lobbying isn't a continuing expense. Google dumped a ton of cash into Washington this quarter fighting SOPA (to all of our benefit, I might add). It won't repeat next quarter, when there will be a similarly distorted story about some other company with an obvious legislative goal.

Some more context: According to Opensecrets[1]:

Computers/Internet spent $125.6M in 2011. TV/Movies/Music spent $123.2M Telecom spent $58.9M

1: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...

Hollywood spent $91 million lobbying in 2011:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68448.html

Very good TAL show on this subject:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...

Google is realizing what so many other companies have discovered -- when you grow large enough to get on the government radar, the government can have huge effects on a business.

Consider this -- what will affect Google's bottom line more tweaking their ad algorithms to slightly increase efficiency or legislation outlawing targeting ads based on specific user behavior?

How about slightly better search results or anti-trust action because of their search "monopoly"?

A slightly better Android OS or patent lawsuits that cause royalties be paid on every single phone sold?

By and large companies invest in actions that most affect the bottom line. A dollar spent on lobbying is a dollar not spent on R&D, operations, support, HR, etc. When you see any company doing a lot of lobbying instead of developing better products and services, there is a reason.

When you see a company spending a relatively minuscule amount of money on lobbying compared to R&D, operations, support, HR, etc, what does that mean?

Maybe Sergey Brin knows something we don't know and they are trying to stop it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom...

Apparently I've read my limit of 10 free articles per month. Is this article anywhere else?

I think you can see it if you are referred via social media, so . . . tweet it and click the link, or search for the title on twitter and click the link.

(I could post a link to my own tweet of the story, but I feel it would come off as more self-serving than altruistic.)

This works for me whenever I'm blocked: http://euri.ca/2011/03/get-around-new-york-times-20-article-...

For any NYT article, you can remove the part of the URL after the "?" and that should show the story to you.

I've been refreshing and stopping the page load before the paywall loads. It works well, for now :)

You can use Firefox's Private Browsing mode or Chrome Incognito mode if you've used up your 10 articles.

so is this more like bribing politicians or more like paying the bad guys to be left alone?

Isn't that the same thing really, even if it ends up benefiting us? I consider all money-based lobbying as bribe. Just because they made it legal, doesn't mean it's right.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "money-based lobbying"?

Paywalled.

Does anyone think Google is lobbying for its self driving car? So far only Nevada has gotten on board with the technology.

Remember, Google does no evil. Some of that money was spent on defeating SOPA/PIPA.

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