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Gigantic web companies Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook are coming together to shape politics in America. We know that our politicians are moved by money and almost nothing else. These companies get it and are going to use it to their advantage. According to Reuters, the massive dotcom companies are planning to create one of the most powerful lobbies in all of Washington, which is a scary concept because they control so much commerce in the United States already.
Facebook and Google could easily become their own governments. Thousands of businesses depend on these companies to pay the bills, and being banned from either of them could cause you to lose millions of dollars overnight. Also, they don’t have much accountability or oversight, even as they both strategically position themselves to control nearly everything you do online. By the time the feds wipe the dust off the Sherman Anti-trust act to hold these companies accountable, it will be too late because the politicians overseeing the hearings will be bought and paid for.
Welcome to a brave new world.
The lobbying group is going to call itself the Internet Association, and business will begin in September. The goal of the organization is to present a unified front for all Internet companies, according to Michael Beckerman, the president of the association.
Beckerman has experience on Capitol Hill as a former chairman of the US House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee.
Some of the issues that the companies are going to fight about are visa restrictions on foreign engineers brought over to work for their firms, privacy issues, security and sales taxes.
“We want to educate [legislators] about the impact of the Internet in their congressional districts,” said Beckerman. “In September, we’ll do a full rollout and announce companies and announce policy positions.”
Google has increased its political presence as of late. The company raised it’s lobbying spending by 90 percent, up to $3.92 million in the second quarter of this year. This move, some say, is in response to the company being investigated for anti-trust violations in both the US and Europe. Facebook has followed suit, increasing its lobbying dollars by 200 percent in the second quarter of this year alone.
