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the great victories for the industry. In addition, IT and cloud companies
have used lobbying to actively resist efforts to tighten privacy protections
in the United States and Europe, to demand higher caps on immigration
visas for skilled foreign tech workers or remove them altogether, to stop
efforts to tighten controls over online advertising, and to prevent reform
of tax laws that have enabled companies to perfect the dark art of tax
avoidance (Nelson and Duhigg 2013; Houlder 2013).
Google led the way with a major boost in its lobbying outlay in
2010, just as concerns were growing about what some charged were the
company's anti-competitive practices (Rao 2010). As the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) continued to look closely at potential antitrust viola-
tions, Google, fearing a repeat of earlier rulings that severely damaged
Microsoft, intensiied its lobbying activities. As one report summarized,
“instead of ignoring Washington—as rival Microsoft did before its costly
monopolization trial in the 1990s—Google spent about $25 million in
lobbying, made an effort to cozy up to the Obama administration and
hired inluential Republicans and former regulators. The company even
consulted with the Heritage Foundation and met with senators like John
Kerry to make its case. In other words, these traditional outsiders worked
the system from the inside” (Romm 2013a). In 2012 alone Google spent
$16 million on lobbying, more than twice that of any other tech com-
pany, and, with twelve different lobbying irms working on its behalf, it
succeeded in forestalling any major restrictions on its market control (T.
Lee 2013).
Learning from Google's success and concerned about its post-IPO
bottom line, Facebook signiicantly increased its lobbying outlays from
$1.34 million in 2011 to $4 million in 2012 (Dembosky 2013b). The last
thing the company needed was stiffer privacy legislation that would cut
into its plans to boost revenues by providing companies with information
about its one billion users. So when the U.S. Federal Trade Commis-
sion began an investigation into nine data brokers that do business with
Facebook, the company boosted its Washington lobbying signiicantly.
Facebook stated, “Our presence and growth in Washington relect our
commitment to explaining how our service works, the actions we take
to protect the billion plus people who use our service, the importance of
preserving an open internet, and the value of innovation to our economy”
(ibid.). In 2013 Facebook set up its own lobbying coalition, FWD.us, to
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