lobbying

Google spent more money in Washington in 2010 as it tried to make its case while fending off federal regulators.

Doing business in the nation's capital requires some expenses, and this year's lobbying efforts set Google back $5.16 million, a 28 percent increase from last year's total of $4.03 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database. Google's interests on Capitol Hill won't surprise many: the company lobbied Congress on issues such as the Internet freedom push from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, cloud computing, intellectual property, data privacy, and Google's pending … Read more

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

While Microsoft has needed all the help it could hire in Washington, D.C., after its antitrust debacle many years ago, Google is quickly catching up to it as a tech power to be reckoned with in the nation's capital.

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

In 2007--as you can see from the table below--Google spent a total of $1.52 million, which … Read more

Faced with issues ranging from online ads to copyright laws, Google spent $950,000 lobbying Washington in the second quarter, according to a federal government database.

The amount compares with the $880,000 that Google spent on lobbying in the first quarter--and the $2.84 million it spent for all of 2008.

Among the issues that Google lobbied on: intellectual property, copyright related to the Google Book Search settlement, and privacy and competition surrounding online advertising.

Google has been under fire from the Justice Department over the company's settlement of a lawsuit with book publishers on digital rights issues.… Read more

Design is not the answer to everything, but it certainly has an important role to play in almost everything that holds a society together.

In light of the current economic crisis, several U.S. professional design organizations (AIGA, IDSA, and others), design education accreditation organizations, and Federal Government officials have seized the historic opportunity and joined forces to launch an initiative to shape a U.S. National Design Policy. In a moment of great global uncertainty and an erosion of national confidence, designers are perfectly positioned to take on a leadership role in "Re-designing America's Future," and … Read more

Over the past few years, the technology industry has discovered that those pesky bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. actually wield a lot of power. Microsoft, in particular, learned years ago that a little money goes a long way to stave off antitrust lawyers, as suggested by The New York Times.

It's therefore not surprising to see Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others actively lobbying Congress for a wide variety of things, including H1-B visa expansion, Net neutrality, etc.

What is perhaps surprising is how much Microsoft is outspending its rivals, as The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

Indeed, as the Associated Press notes, … Read more

Two tech trade and lobby groups say they are exploring a merger.

The two groups together would represent more than 2,000 companies--right now AEA has 2,500 member companies, the Information Technology Association of America about 350, with some overlap. The two say becoming one would increase their size and clout.

ITAA and AEA (formerly known as the American Electronics Association) would complement each other, according to AEA President Christopher Hansen. AEA lobbies mainly at the state level, while ITAA works with at the federal and international level.

The merger is not a done deal yet, but both groups … Read more

WASHINGTON--Two security researchers at ShmooCon demonstrated on Saturday how a laptop connected to a VoIP telephone could, in some cases, expose a business' internal network to outsiders.

John Kindervag, senior security architect for Vigilar, said that public waiting areas in hospitals, conference rooms, and hotel rooms are particularly vulnerable to this attack since often there is no IT staff around. Appearing on stage at the East Coast computer hacker conference with Kindervag was Jason Ostrom, manager of Vigilar's Vulnerability Assessment and Compliance Practice team, who used the ShmooCon conference to show off his latest version of VoIP Hopper, a … Read more

Update 1:50 p.m. PST: Added Microsoft's overall lobbying expense figures for the first half of 2007.

Here's a shocker: Microsoft lobbies Congress.

OK, so it's not. But it's interesting to keep tabs on how much the software maker is spending and who it's hired to do its bidding.

The Associated Press reported that Microsoft paid $160,000 last year to the firm Patton Boggs to lobby on "antitrust issues surrounding mergers and acquisitions in the technology sector." The bulk of that--$120,000--was spent in the second half of the year, … Read more

WASHINGTON--Dell chief Michael Dell and other high-profile technology company CEOs descended on the nation's capital Wednesday with a message for policymakers: do more to encourage energy-efficient practices, but don't spell out specific standards for the products that companies like theirs build.

On behalf of a lobby group known as the Technology CEO Council, Dell, EMC chief Joe Tucci, and Applied Materials head Mike Splinter suggested the government should do more to "lead by example." They said it can do that by reevaluating its own power consumption, setting "high goals" for energy efficiency, awarding presidential … Read more