Facebook Lobbying Spend Up 196%, Google Up 70% In 2012 To Try To Sway Privacy, Anti-Trust Legislation

Josh Constine
@joshconstine /

When you’re crushing your competitors, it’s the government that can be your biggest threat. That’s why Google grew its lobbying spend 70% to $16.48 million in 2012 and Facebook’s fees soared 196% to $3.99 million as they tried to buy government influence. Not everyone’s so worried about Washington, though. Apple’s yearly lobbying spend decreased 13% to $2.26 million.

Google and Facebook’s expenditures may have helped them escape punitive legislation and court rulings this time. Facebook avoided a fine from the FTC, though it will have to endure privacy audits for 20 years. Meanwhile, many feel Google got off light when it wasn’t hit with anti-trust charges earlier this month.

Facebook boosted lobbying fees by 318% in Q4 2012, possibly in anticipation of its new Graph Search feature which makes personal data much more accessible.

Other stats from disclosure forms filed late Tuesday include that Microsoft’s spend increased 10.2% to $8.09 million in 2012, while. Amazon slowed spending in Q4 but was still up 12.6% to $2.5 million over the year.

John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project condemned the search and social titans, saying “Google and Facebook would have you believe that they are different from other corporations. They are not. They are following the corrupt corporate tradition in Washington: buying what you want.” On the other hand, you could say this lobbying spend is about education. Washington doesn’t necessarily understand the evolving tech space. Misinterpretations or paranoid conclusions could be catastrophic for these companies, so when they’re making billions, spending millions for some sway in the capital might be a bargain.

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Here’s a rundown of exactly what Facebook and Google specifically spent their lobbying on.

Facebook put its money towards:

Google did so much lobbying that I’ll just summarize the areas it spent money on:

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