John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Google Puts More Cash Toward Capital Clout

“I’ve never seen a tech company ramp up faster than they have in the last year or two,” tech lobbyist Ralph Hellmann once said of Google. “They’re using all the tools in the lobbying tool kit.”

And buying some new ones as well.

The company spent $5.16 million trying to influence policy in Washington, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

That’s 28 percent more than the $4.03 million it spent last year, but then Google’s interests on Capitol Hill these days are quite a bit more extensive than they once were. Where once there were competition and privacy issues and little else, there are now privacy, data security, patent reform, copyright, renewable energy and tax reform issues, among other things.

Oh. And rivals with differing interests and bigger lobbying spends. Microsoft, for example, which ended the year with a $6.91 million lobbying spend to Google’s $5.16 million.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik