Google Finds Workaround for Lobbying Rules That Omits Big Bosses

It was the end of 2018, and Google’s leaders were tired of being Number One.

For the second year in a row, federal records showed the search giant had spent more than any other individual company on lobbying in Washington. Executives in Mountain View were sick of seeing that mentioned in the press.

Then Google apparently found a workaround.

A new analysis of federal lobbying data by the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project shows that Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. used an internal reorganization to exclude the value of lobbying by its senior executives from disclosures. The move ...