In honor of election day, here is some unsettling info from IDG. The research firm reports that 2013 was a record year for computer and internet company spending on lobbying in the U.S., and 2014 is looking set to continue that trend. They presented an infographic that tracks information technology firms’ money spent buying, corrupting, lobbying politicians.
The article says that advertising, privacy, cybersecurity, patents & IP, tax, immigration, energy, drones, and mobile payments are all issues the tech industry wants to control, dominate influence on Capitol Hill. IDG’s research says that Google was the biggest spender; the search giant spent $3.94M in Q3, an increase from this time last year.
IDG reports that many well-known tech firms have increased their political spending when compared to last year. They report that social networking giant Facebook (FB) has already surpassed its lobbying spend compared to all of last year. Other tech mega-firms that have increased their attempts to buy political power lobbying include:
Microsoft (MSFT), historically one of the biggest spenders in this area, was one of the few companies to actually decrease its spending from this time last year, down by a quarter to $1.66M according to the report. It seems a lot of the other legacy enterprise companies are also cutting back. Other companies reducing lobbying spend compared to this time last year are:
- SAP (SAP) (down 41%),
- IBM (IBM) (28%),
- Intel (INTC) (23%),
- Cisco (CSCO) (18%) and
- Oracle (ORCL) (12%).
Don’t worry about the fat-cats, IDG says there are plenty of other companies also lining politicians pockets spending +/- $1M each on lobbying including the likes of:
- AMD (AMD),
- CA (CA),
- Cognizant (CTSH),
- Huawei (002502),
- McAfee,
- Salesforce (CRM),
- Samsung (005930),
- Symantec (SYMC),
- Twitter (TWTR),
- startup Uber and
- venerable Xerox (XRX).
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No wonder Washington is broken, how much of this money goes into the stupid TV ads you can’t escape. Maybe if these firms paid their proper taxes they would not have so much cash to spend buying congress. Oh right – IBM is a person who has rights.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.