Inside Google

Google Spent $1.38 Million on Federal Lobbying in Q1

Google spent $4.03 million lobbying the federal government last year, according to records on the Senate site, compared with Microsoft Corp’s $6.72 million and Oracle Corp’s $5.10 million. First-quarter figures from those companies were expected to be filed by the end of Tuesday. John Simpson, a consumer advocate with the group Consumer Watchdog, said the latest data shows the extent to which Google is increasing its lobbying efforts. Google has “gone from no presence in Washington, to really now what’s one of the biggest lobby shops around,” Simpson said.

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Obama’s Googler Draws Fire

A pair of consumer advocacy groups sent the White House a letter on
Wednesday urging the administration not to appoint Google’s Andrew
McLaughlin to the post, a move reported to be in works by several media
outlets. McLaughlin is Google’s director of global public policy. That means he
has been “responsible for Google’s worldwide lobbying efforts,” said
the letter from Consumer Watchdog and Center for Digital Democracy. Obama has issued an executive order barring anyone who has worked as a
lobbyist in the past two years from serving in a federal agency that
they lobbied.

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