What is Lobbying: Lobbying (also Lobby) is the intention of influencing decisions made by legislators and officials in the government by individuals, other legislators, constituents, or advocacy groups. A lobbyist is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest or a member of a lobby.
Some countries like US allow lobbying and have clear cut rules to govern it; while those like India don’t, although Lobbying takes place in these countries as well. The idea is to define and regulate organized group lobbying that has become influential.
In simple, Lobbying is an attempt by businesses to get things done their way, by giving favours to legislators/senators and all those people who can influence the perceptions of public, judiciary and legislature.
What decides the money a company spends on Lobbying: There are three deciding factors:
1) The Larger the Company more it spends on Lobbying, for obvious reasons.
2) The more controversies surrounding a company, more will be the lobbying buget, for obvious reasons.
3) The company is expanding in areas that are not part of its core business.
So Lobbying budgets of a company keeps fluctuating.
Below is the money some top tech companies spent on Lobbying in 2010 (according to the U.S. Senate’s lobbying disclosure database):
Google________________$5.16 billion
Yahoo_________________ $2.21 billion
Apple_________________ $1.6 billion
Facebook______________ $351,390
The reasons for Google having the highest Lobbying budgets for 2010, increased lobbyist spending by 28 percent annually, is understandable as the search engine company is doing many things in cloud computing, intellectual property protection, data privacy; plus its acquisition of ITA Software, which the U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly investigating for possible antitrust violations.
Facebook’s spent is insignificant compared to that of the other three as the social network has only had a presence in Washington D.C. for a couple of years. Plus it has only started coming into the eyes of the world and competitors. A high surge in its lobbying budget should be expected in coming months and years, if it continues to expand, grow and confront.
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Money Top Tech companies spent on Lobbying in 2010
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