Google hires prominent US politicians to lobby Europe on its behalf, report

Google has been spending big money on fighting antitrust cases in Europe, including calling in favours from US politicians, an investigation finds

Google has been paying US politicians from Senate and Congress to lobby on its behalf in Brussels, an investigation has discovered.

In November 2014 the European Parliament voted in favour of breaking up Google to prevent it from abusing its dominance with 90 per cent of the search market. This was just one skirmish in a long-running antitrust dispute between the EU and Google, with the Europeans arguing that Google uses its search engine to promote its own products to the detriment of its competitors.

While the European Parliament has no real power to break up Google, the vote was widely criticised at the time by US politicians and trade groups as harmful to relations.

"This and similar proposals build walls rather than bridges [and] do not appear to give full consideration to the negative effect such policies may have on the broader US-EU trade relationship," wrote senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch and congressmen Dave Camo and Sander Levin, in an open letter.

Now an investigation by the TheGuardian has revealed that these politicians and others, many of whose campaigns were bankrolled by Google, have been acting on its behalf as part of a highly co-ordinated paid-for lobbying campaign.

It may not be able to break up Google, but if found guilty of antitrust violations the European Parliament could impose a potential fine of $6bn on the company. There is also a separate EU investigation going on into whether Google has impeded market access to rival mobile operating systems, and is preventing the development of competing versions of Android. In fact, Google is rarely out of the courts.

To push its case the firm spent $400m lobbying Brussels last year, more than twice the figure for Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Uber combined - although less than Microsoft, who some accuse of mounting an anti-Google campaign in Europe. It is a significantly larger sum than it spent in previous years. Overall, Google has spent around $3.5bn lobbying the EU, The Guardian estimates.

Some of this money has been spent in getting "tame" politicians from both major US parties to write letters of protest to MEPs about the antitrust proceedings, such as the one above. Referring to one case in particular the paper says:

"The US House Judiciary Committee wrote to MEPs concerning the antitrust case against Google. The committee's chairman, Bob Goodlatte, said the committee was ‘troubled to learn' some MEPs were ‘encouraging antitrust enforcement efforts that appear to be motivated by politics' that would ultimately undermine free markets."

Goodlatte's committee has enjoyed a rewarding relationship with Google over the years, it notes.

"Google has consistently donated to Goodlatte's election campaigns, while members on the judiciary committee that he chairs collectively received more than $200,000 (£133,000) from the company during the 2014 election cycle."

The EU antitrust battle is far from being the only competition case that Google is fighting, with rulings pending in the US and Russia too. But with its largest sparring partner now seemingly in the mood for a fight, signing into law large fines for breaking the new data protection laws, for example, it is likely to face a bruising future.

The internet giant's investors are "beginning to wake up to the trouble it faces in Brussels," The Guardian notes, quoting Scott Kessler, an equity analyst at S&P Capital IQ.

"Google have been facing these issues in Europe for a number of years and some people believe that now is the time that they will have to account for some of these actions in some way," Kessler says.