The Hill is reporting that Google will hire twelve lobbying firms--not twelve lobbyists, but twelve firms!--in response to the Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust investigation. Congress has been watching the tech giant more closely recently as many have grown concerned with its methods for collecting private information and giving it to advertisers, while last week,it was revealed that the FTC had subpoenaed documents concerning Google's dominance in the search engine market. In response, The Hill's Gautham Nagesh reports, Google has hired lobbyists to try to influence lawmakers on issues of copyright enforcement, competition the search engine market, and privacy.

Nagesh writes:

The firms in question are Akin, Gump; Bingham; Capitol Legislative Strategies; Chesapeake Group; Crossroads Strategies; Gephardt Group; Holland & Knight; Normandy Group; Prime Policy; The First Group; The Madison Group; and the Raben Group.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at ereeve at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Elspeth Reeve