Summary: New figures and new reports about Microsoft lobbying in the United States

MICROSOFT'S influence in the US government is nothing to sneeze at and in the coming days we'll show some shocking examples where Microsoft uses government connections to compete, as opposed to using better products to compete. Last night we wrote about several Microsoft managers who had left and Microsoft's federal chief is also leaving, as covered in several Web sites [1, 2] including a Microsoft-tilted one (yes, Microsoft has connections also with news sites that cover government issues):

Teresa Carlson, who has led Microsoft Corp.’s federal division, is resigning to direct the cloud computing efforts at Amazon.com.

Despite Microsoft's influence inside the government, retaining workers has been proving hard as of late. On the other hand, Microsoft did manage to attract the former Voodoo chief [1, 2] and at the end of October we all found out about Steve Jobs having a fury episode over Microsoft-Bungie [1, 2, 3, 4]. Microsoft relies on games, so it has also just hired Rahul Sood for this purpose, as covered in a lot of sites, e.g. [1, 2].

“It gives the illusion that corporations play only a modest role in running a country.”Microsoft is meanwhile hiring more lobbyists, too: "Microsoft said Monday it has hired Capitol Hill veteran Charles Salem as managing director of public policy."

A new report reveals only the known and disclosed part of Microsoft lobbying whilst excluding the rest, as usual. It says that "Microsoft Corp. spent $1.63 million in the third quarter to lobby the federal government on a broad range of issues from software piracy to competition in online advertising, according to a disclosure report."

Watch Microsoft throwing $1 million just influencing government policy. This is not how the government is supposed to be run. Clearly the figure above is fictional because it is highly incomplete. It gives the illusion that corporations play only a modest role in running a country. ⬆