Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Google’s Q1 Federal Lobbying Receipt: $5M

Google spent $5.03 million on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2012, according to a regulatory document filed Friday. That topped such traditional big spenders as Verizon ($4.51 million) and Comcast ($4.55 million).

Google's lobbying spending has leapt up in recent years, and this chart (from the Center for Responsive Politics) doesn't even include the most recent quarter.

The $5 million is a new record for Google, by far — up from $3.76 million spent on lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2011. You can also compare it to $9.68 million for all of 2011.

Categories of issues that Google lobbied for or against in Q1 2012 included copyright, immigration, trade, small business, consumer safety and telecommunications.

The quarter was particularly notable because of the tech community’s effective protest of the proposed Stop Online Privacy Act and Protect Intellectual Privacy Act (SOPA and PIPA, respectively, in the House and the Senate), though this filing does not specifically break out Google’s spending on that topic.

Here’s the filing, via the Lobbying Disclosure Act database:

GooglelobbyingQ1

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald