“The congressional lobbying disclosure reports for the second quarter of 2012 are out, and once again Google has outspent Apple nearly 10 to one,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“This was my first exposure to the forms public companies are required to file under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, and I found them fascinating,” P.E.D. reports. “For example, you can see, line by line, which bills Apple is concerned about.”
P.E.D. reports, “The list is long, and it ranges from the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 to ‘issues related to the transportation of batteries.’ Given the latest kerfuffle about Apple’s temporary withdrawal from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool program a couple weeks ago, I was interested to see ‘EPEAT’ on the list.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “HTML5 Gordon” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Google to pay $22.5 million to settle charges over bypassing privacy settings of millions of Apple users – July 10, 2012
Apple is taking a bruising in Washington D.C. as lobbying effort has yet to ripen – May 9, 2012
With antitrust mutters growing, Apple triples federal lobbying expenses, boosts D.C. presence – April 9, 2011
Apple hires new D.C. lobbyists, former G. W. Bush staffers to influence U.S. federal government – February 5, 2011
This is pretty old news: Google spent close to $10 mil in 2010, over $10 mil in 2011 and is on pace to double or triple that in 2012.
True, Google has always outspent Apple on lobbying.
What is interesting is the fact that they are accelerating their spending. Obviously they are trying to buy favor.
It’s also interesting to get a glimpse into what each company is lobbying for in the full LD-2 reports.
Google learned from Microsoft’s initial misgivings about lobbying. Get in there, do it, put a sparkle in those Senators’ eyes, you’ll get what you want. It’s a cost of doing business…
Next up is Facebook, hitting the ground running, lobbying-wise, since their recent IPO.
At issue: the future of our privacy—or the disappearance of same.
At issue: the future of our privacy—or the disappearance of same.
You think you still have some modicum of privacy? Bwahahaha!
When you are not investing in your company, when you are not creating, or innovating stuff, you are instead lobbying politicians.
Google = EVIL
Lobbying = legal bribery!
US political system = epic farce
exactly correct, Ubermac!
Go to Cuba, commie.
I don’t have a problem with paid lobbying, at least not in the practical sense (I don’t have time to advocate my perspective on my own in every instance that impacts my industry) . That it has become damned near a necessity to have any real voice in shaping law is a damned shame, though.
If you’re all right with paid lobbying, then you’re all right with somebody with more money than you having preferred access to YOUR representatives. For sale to highest bidder.
I have a problem with that. Because what has developed is not a republic with representative democracy — it is a thinly veiled plutocracy. Rather than using technology to better inform & engage citizens in the operation of their society, instead the moneyed “job creators” pay for lobbyists and electioneers to distract, distort, mischaracterize, mislead, slander, gerrymander & lie to get their puppets in office. Then the people wonder why their “representatives”, especially in this high-tech era, are so ineffective at listening to their real constituents to whom they are supposed to serve. / off soap box /
Only if the representatives can be bought. You want to use technology to inform people about issues? Great. But someone will always have to get paid to do the “informing.” Unless, of course, you and your friends are going to do it for free.
The world is not as black and white as you make it out to be. Do corporations with more money get more access? Sure they do. But lobbyists (paid ones, mind you) also represent much smaller industries and inform our representatives about issues they may not know about. It’s by no means a perfect system, but the decisions of our leaders are not made in vacuums, nor should they be.
Google’s D.C. lobbyists have outspent Apple nearly 10 to 1
This is how the Corporate Oligarchy uses world governments as their puppets. What? You didn’t elect Google and Apple and Monsanto ad nauseam to represent you? Really? There are no provisions in the US Constitution that indicate the government is run by those with the most MONEY?
Tough. Apparently that doesn’t matter to either of the scumbag poliTard parties that run the US government. They’re ‘bought and paid for’, no matter which party they’re from. Consign them both to the pits of their self-made hell.
Enter the 3rd parties…
Oh and yeah. Corporations are well known to actually WRITE legislation for the US Congress. We the citizens are soooo well represented! 😛