How much does the lobby

The recent announcement of quarterly earnings turned out to be almost the most successful in the history of many public companies: Apple sells iPads more than it manages to collect, Microsoft managed to achieve a record profit while reducing sales of Windows and Office, and indeed, with undisguised pleasure showed how their business grew over the past three months.



Nevertheless, it is always much more interesting to consider where and how much money is spent in these companies. It seems to me that the most interesting type of spending is lobbying for private interests at the state level. Imagine that in the tax returns you file you would honestly indicate the amount of bribes taken or transferred to various government agencies (and performers) - a rough comparison, but in the right direction. Fortunately, in the west this process is legalized and for this reason, the giants of the IT industry publish in their reports the sums spent on lobbying the government and the legislative process.



In the second quarter of 2011, which we will consider, the two companies spent the largest amount of money for this purpose: Google and Microsoft, we’ll dilute them with Facebook for interest.

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Google, for the past six months, spends a record amount of money on lobbying - this time $ 2.06 million, which is half more than a year ago. Last quarter, the company spent $ 1.48 million on lawmakers; and for the whole of last year - $ 5.2 million.



What are Google lobbyists focused on? Everything is more or less standard and does not change from year to year: regulation of the online advertising market, intellectual property and trademarks, network security, privacy, sources of renewable energy, freedom of expression, censorship, "openness and competition in the online services market", clouds , tax reform, free trade, and broadband access in the United States.



Interestingly, only in this quarter, Google bypassed Microsoft in the cost of its own lobby. The latter company spent $ 1.85 million in the second quarter, which is slightly more in the second quarter of 2010 (always compared to last year). In the first quarter of 2011, Microsoft gave out of its own pocket $ 1.72 million to its own representatives in the US Congress.



It's no secret that the former CEO and current Chairman of the Board of Google, Eric Schmidt, spent a lot of time and effort in establishing good relations with representatives of the US government. It is possible that he will even be the defendant of the company in future antitrust courts that are now threatening the search giant.



For the same reason, we should expect an even greater level of spending on lobbying by Google in the next quarter of this year. The company has already officially announced that it has entered into contracts with 12 additional offices providing similar services.



As for the social network, its expenses are much more modest: $ 320,000 for the past quarter, which is even slightly less than the amount spent over the same period last year - $ 351,390. But the fact of the increase in expenses remains a fact - for the first half of 2011 Facebook has already spent more on the lobby than last year, intending to break the $ 1 million bar for 2011.



The areas in which Facebook’s leadership is trying to influence are: international regulation of software companies, restrictions on access to the Internet by other governments, patent reform, online security, privacy, dialogue with the White House / Senate / government to use more and more social media in communication with the population, as well as a very specific area - lobbying the Oregon state administration, where they are trying to increase the construction of power plants and water pumping stations in order to Jelic inflow of technology and capital (Facebook opened a new "green" data center in April this year).



The social network, like other large and active companies, strengthens its ties with the US government; in April, a special meeting was even held with Barack Obama in its white territory. Facebook, like Google, just recently announced the hiring of several lobbying companies to achieve a greater effect on the spent dollar.



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