While the world is busy raising children with stories of honesty, integrity, morals and other dying breeds of conduct, mathematics tells a nice story on how some laws are really made. Namely, data on several companies’ expenses for lobbying in Washington has been brought to public attention.
Verizon and AT&T spent $3.83 and $3.47 million respectively. As one may expect, the telcos needed to address the issues of distracted driving, taxes and some other things.
Microsoft spent $1.63 million in its visits to the Congress, the Pentagon and Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security. Among other things, the company talked to government officials about computer security, although one may argue that Microsoft is least credible to even mention the word “security”. Furthermore, it talked about how the government buys software and lobbied the FTC on net neutrality issues.
Google spent $1.2 million in the third quarter whereas Intel decreased its previous year spending from $1.1 million to $830,000, most probably for the two antitrust lawsuits settled in the meantime.
It is pretty interesting to see the mighty Apple spending only $340,000. Of course, with Obama calling Jobs’ practice an “American dream”, it’s quite easy to see why they don’t need to lobby anyone – they just send them notices on their iPhones and iPads.
Friday, 24 December 2010 10:33
How much do tech companies spend on lobbying?
Written by Nedim Hadzic
It's called investing in the future
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Nedim Hadzic
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