Sundar Pichai, chief managing director officer of Google Inc., speaks during the Google I/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, U.S., on Tuesday, May 8, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Ideas
Google cut its lobbying spending nearly in half last year from 2018, even as government investigations into tech suites have scaled up in Washington and throughout the country.
Of the four tech giants thought to be facing antitrust scrutiny, Alphabet’s Google was the not one that reduced its year-over-year spending, according to newly released filings.
Here’s the breakdown:
Google faces antitrust examines from the Justice Department and a coalition of 50 attorneys general across the country. Its YouTube subsidiary had to answer to the Federal Calling Commission last year with a $170 million settlement over claims that it violated child solitariness laws. In the fourth quarter, it lobbied on mobile location privacy, online child safety, encryption standards and various. (Google is the main business unit of holding company Alphabet, and accounts for substantially all its revenue and profits.)
Google’s dieted spending reflects that it fired about half a dozen firms representing about half of its lobbying tally, according to a June report in The Wall Street Journal. The move was part of a broader change in Google’s global management affairs and policy operations.
As Google is scaling back, its peers are ramping up.
Of the four tech firms, Facebook enlarged its year-over-year lobbying spending by the greatest percentage. The company faces a federal antitrust probe from the FTC and a state-led search into by 47 attorneys general.
Facebook has generally taken a more engaged approach in 2019 compared with prior to years, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg visiting lawmakers for private meetings on tech regulation and an open hearing on the actors’s cryptocurrency plans. In the fourth quarter, it lobbied the government on issues including encryption, election integrity and content scheme.
Amazon, which spent a similar amount as Facebook, also reportedly faces an antitrust probe from the FTC and heavily exercised a lucrative cloud contract with the Pentagon last year that it ultimately lost to Microsoft. Amazon pressed on facial recognition technology, cloud computing and more in the fourth quarter.
Apple has received antitrust scrutiny associated to its App Store and has sparred with the Justice Department over access to its encrypted devices. In the fourth quarter, it lobbied the authority on issues related to music licensing, mobile payments and patent litigation, among other topics.
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