Google, Amazon, and Meta spent tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} lobbying Congress final yr because the tech behemoths got here underneath rising scrutiny from antitrust regulators and lawmakers on each side of the aisle.
Google’s mother or father firm Alphabet Inc. boosted spending on lobbyists by 27.5% final yr to $9.6 million, in keeping with filings.
Meta Platforms Inc., which operates Fb and Instagram, spent an all-time document of $20.1 million on lobbyists whereas e-commerce retailer Amazon spent round $20.3 million.
Each Meta and Amazon elevated their lobbying expenditures by 7% in comparison with 2020.
Apple, alternatively, spent much less cash to foyer Washington final yr. The iPhone producer’s lobbying expenditures from 2021 reached $6.5 million – down from $6.7 million.
All 4 corporations have come underneath criticism for allegedly utilizing anti-competitive practices to cement their dominance.
Microsoft, which recently announced it would be acquiring video game maker Activision-Blizzard, spent $10.2 million on lobbying in 2021 — across the similar quantity it spent the earlier yr.
The specter of anti-monopoly laws aimed on the tech corporations prompted Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook to personally foyer members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote towards the American Innovation and Selection On-line Act.
Cook dinner and Pichai argued that the invoice would weaken American tech corporations and provides their international opponents like these in China a bonus.
Their efforts have been unsuccessful, because the committee voted to advance the laws, which targets the most important corporations based mostly on market valuation and consumer base.
Google asked a New York federal judge on Friday to throw out most of what it claimed was an “inaccurate and inflammatory” antirust go well with introduced by Texas and 14 different states over the tech big’s internet marketing practices.
The Texas go well with — which was first filed in December 2020 and been up to date twice since then — claims that Google illegally muscled opponents out of the internet marketing market and even struck a backroom cope with Mark Zuckerberg to give Meta’s Facebook a lucrative leg up in online ad auctions.
Earlier this month, a decide allowed the Federal Trade Commission to pursue an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, which is accused of monopolizing social media.
