TTP Report: Google ‘Shell Game’ Shields Executive Lobbying from Public View
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 14, 2025
Contact: Michael Clauw, mclauw@campaignforaccountability.org, 202.780.5750
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new Tech Transparency Project (TTP) report reveals how Google—which at one time spent the most on lobbying of any U.S. corporation—employed an obscure legal strategy that reduced the amount of lobbying spending it discloses under federal law. The strategy removes executive lobbying from the company’s disclosures, in what one expert described as a “shell game.”
“The public deserves an accurate picture of what companies spend on their government influence efforts. Google maintains one of the most robust corporate lobbying operations in the country, and this legal strategy keeps the public in the dark about a key aspect of it,” said Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of Campaign for Accountability, the nonprofit watchdog that runs TTP.
For most of its existence, Google included the value of any lobbying by its senior executives in its disclosures, as most companies do. In early 2020, however, Google quietly moved its in-house lobbyists into a new subsidiary called Google Client Services LLC. Now that Google’s parent company had no in-house lobbyists, the company reasoned, it no longer had to register at all, according to current and former Google employees. And, because Google’s executives didn’t technically work for the lobbying subsidiary, they wouldn’t have to disclose the cost of their lobbying, either.
Under the new model, Google’s reported lobbying expenses fell by millions of dollars, and it dropped out of the top 20 corporate lobbying spenders for the first time in nearly a decade.
In a statement, Google said there were multiple reasons behind the decrease in the company’s lobbying numbers, including a restructuring of the company’s government affairs operation and the pandemic. Google called the creation of the subsidiary “a technical change that aligns with how other companies report and fully complies with disclosure laws.”
Google’s arrangement, which has not previously been reported, allows the company to shield a significant portion of its lobbying expenditures from public view. With Big Tech executives like Google CEO Sundar Pichai playing a bigger role in advocating for their companies, Google’s arrangement means that the public will be kept in the dark about the full scope of its lobbying operation.
Campaign for Accountability is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life and hold those who act at the expense of the public good accountable for their actions.