- In what appears to be a new record, tech giants Amazon, Facebook and Google collectively spent more than $10 million for the second quarter of 2018 on lobbying Washington
- Facebook spent $3.67 million, Google $5.83 million and lastly Amazon spent $3.47 million to please Uncle Sam
Recently these prominent companies have been under fire from various agencies and activists for unethical practices. This latest spending seems to be aimed at getting on the better side of Washington amid the growing dissent against them.
Facebook was under heavy criticism a while ago for misusing user data which also culminated into Mark Zuckerberg appearing in the US senate in a desperate attempt to smooth things over. The Cambridge Analytica scandal hurt poor Zuch real bad, but he still managed to become the second richest person, next to only Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Facebook spent $3.67 million the last quarter on lobbying which is the largest amount the company has spent in any quarter.
Amazon has also been facing some criticism from Donald Trump over CEO Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post. On Monday, Trump again attacked him pointing to an antitrust claim against the company. To put things into perspective, Amazon also spent a record $3.47 million in the quarter.
Google was days ago slapped with a humongous $5 billion fine by the European Union for anti-competitive practices and misusing the Android OS to favor the Google search engine. The Alphabet owned search giant paid the highest of all three companies, a record sum of $5.83 million on lobbying for Q2 of 2018.
Seems like these days money can pretty much get anything done as long as you can afford to spend it that is. What are your opinions on this?