Facebook, Amazon set lobbying records as tech scrutiny grows

Bloomberg

Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc set records for lobbying in the second quarter as Washington ramped up scrutiny of big technology companies, while Google’s spending dipped as it continued to reshuffle its influence operations.
The world’s largest social media site spent more than $4.1 million on lobbying, the most among big internet platforms, an increase from its previous high in the same period a year earlier.
Facebook disclosed lobbying around blockchain, the technology that underlies cryptocurrencies. The company has been trying to win support for its Libra cryptocurrency, which drew skepticism from President Donald Trump, congressional Democrats and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and took a beating from lawmakers in both houses of Congress during two days of hearings.
The company was also in the final stages of settling an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The FTC has voted to fine the company $5 billion and is expected to announce the final details of the settlement within days.
Amazon spent more than $4 million on lobbying, topping a quarterly record in the first three months of the year, according to disclosures filed with Congress before the deadline. Amazon, which runs a broad lobbying operation on a diverse range of issues, is closing in on a $10 billion cloud services contract that the Pentagon is poised to award to a single bidder next month.
Last week, Trump criticised Amazon as the perceived front-runner for the contract, saying companies such as Oracle Corp and Microsoft Corp had complained that the process was unfair. Oracle has led a sustained lobbying campaign against the department’s plans to award the project, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, to a single bidder.
In June, Amazon hired Jeff Miller, who bundled $1 million for Trump’s 2016 campaign, to lobby for its cloud computing division on issues related to “cyber security and technology services,” the filings show.
Trump said he would look “very seriously” at the bid.
Oracle spent almost $1.7 million during the quarter, when it said it lobbied on issues including cloud and government IT procurement. It also lobbied the White House and the office of Vice President Mike Pence, the disclosures show. Microsoft Corp, which is the last remaining cloud provider that’s vying with Amazon for the contract, spent $2.7 million in the quarter, while International Business Machines Corp, which was eliminated as a competitor along with Oracle, spent $1.6 million, including lobbying on JEDI, the filings show.

Antitrust Scrutiny
The big internet companies are coming under growing antitrust pressure as the US moves toward investigating whether their conduct squelches competition. The Justice Department and the FTC, which share antitrust jurisdiction, have carved up responsibility for oversight, with the FTC taking responsibility for Facebook and Amazon and the department’s antitrust division claiming Alphabet Inc’s Google and Apple Inc.
Facebook and Amazon also underwent a series of hearings by a House committee conducting a broad antitrust investigation of technology companies, drawing ire from lawmakers during the latest hearing.
Google ended its relationships with at least 17 lobbyists at six outside lobbying firms as global policy chief, Karan Bhatia, reorganises the search engine’s approach.