Ryan Grim, Zach Carter and Paul Blumenthal have a long piece up describing Google’s expanding presence in Washington, D.C. that is worth more than one close reading. The headline is that the company, which has been long seen to tilt liberal (Eric Schmidt, its executive chairman, is close to the Obama White House, and in 2008, 83% of the money contributed by the company and its employees went to Democratic candidates and party committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics), has recently gone on a spending spree on the Republican side of the aisle. “In the last nine months, Google has hired 18 lobbying shops — not 18 lobbyists, but 18 firms, a dozen of them since July, a head-turning torrent of hiring that also includes consultants not required to register as lobbyists,” they write, noting:
[The company is] now giving money to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican Governors Association, the GOP firm The David All Group, Crossroads Strategies, the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee, among others.
Google is now spending the same amount on lobbying as its rival Microsoft (they each plunked down $3.5 million during the first half of 2011), though the colossus of Seattle still produces far more campaign dollars for candidates than Google, the authors note. The reasons for Google’s shift are described in some detail in the article, but boil down to this: On issues ranging from antitrust to patents to copyrights and China, the company is feeling all kinds of pressure and apparently has decided that it has to put on the same armor that every other multinational corporation uses to get its way in Washington.
September 25, 2011