A lot of attention has been paid to the political leanings of Google employees, from the engineer who was fired after he put out a memo theorizing that women were less suited to careers in tech than men to the employees who walked out for a day last year to demand the company do more to fight climate change. This focus on the internal ideology makes a certain amount of sense: Google has so much power in the U.S. and the world that the ideological leanings of its workers could have an outsized impact. But employees at Google—or its parent company, Alphabet—also have an old-fashioned type of power thanks to their high salaries: they can donate thousands to campaigns.
As an institution, Google is not particularly partisan. Its PAC spent around $1.8 million in the 2020 cycle, and its donations were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. It tends to exert its political influence in non-electoral ways, having spent more than that in lobbying in the third quarter of 2020 alone. This make sense given that Google's top priority politically is beating off a suite of antitrust suits brought by the Department of Justice and dozens of states. The tech leviathan faces opposition from both Democrats and Republicans for a variety of reasons; anti-monopolist views have been on the rise among progressives while some conservatives believe tech companies like Google work to suppress right-wing speech.
But it would likely be a mistake to think that these concerns motivate a lot of political giving from individual Google employees. Though many higher-ups contribute to Google's own PAC, they also give millions to political organizations and candidates (most of them Democrats), and are likely motivated by the mixture of philosophy and partisanship that moves most people to become political donors. Tech workers who usually live in Palo Alto or other deep-blue areas are naturally going to lean left in their giving. There aren’t any true megadonors beyond former Eric Schmidt (who reportedly left the advisory role he was serving in back in February, though he still lists his employment with Alphabet on his website), but there are a bunch of lesser-known figures who have chipped in tens of thousands. Here are some of the top donors at Google:
Eric Schmidt
Schmidt is almost a one-man PAC, spewing out millions to organizations like the Future Forward USA PAC (which got $750,000 from him this year), the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund (over $525,000), Democrats Abroad ($70,000), the Latino-focused PAC Casa in Action ($100,000) and dozens of state and local Democratic parties (he regularly gives the maximum $10,000 allowable by law to them).
He’s been a player in Democratic politics since he spent a lot backing Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign; he was reportedly under consideration for the Commerce Secretary gig after Obama won. Since stepping back from Google, he’s gone on to have a new career as a technical advisor to the Defense Department and there is a rumor he may be appointed to a tech-focused task force. (Schmidt also applied recently to become a citizen of Cyprus, effectively buying a European Union passport. Tech billionaires love keeping their options open.)
Rich Miner
No one else on this list is anyone close to Schmidt’s level, but Google is a sprawling constellation with a lot of millionaires who write checks to Democrats. One of these is Miner, an Android co-founder who became a Google employee when the search engine giant bought his company in 2005. Today he’s an adviser at GV, previously Google Ventures, which is Alphabet’s venture capital arm.
Miner’s biggest donation to date was a $33,400 gift to the DNC in 2020 (he’s given over $50,000 to that org in 2020), but he’s also supported a variety of individual candidates, particularly in the New England area (Miner is a longtime Massachusetts resident). He’s donated to Joe Kennedy, Maine Senator Angus King, and gave $5,400 to Maura Sullivan in her failed 2018 primary effort in New Hampshire; he’s also contributed to at-risk Democratic incumbents in red states, like Montana’s Steve Bullock and Alabama’s Doug Jones.
Linus Upson
Upson isn’t well known outside of tech circles, but he’s a rock star when it comes to browser development, having worked at Netscape in the 90s and led the team that built Chrome. As a donor, his most significant activity was backing Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate run (he gave $5,400 to O’Rourke and $10,000 to the Texas Democratic Party). In 2020, he donated $4,000 apiece to pretty much all of the swing-state Democratic Senate candidates, at least $30,000 to the DNC and thousands more to assorted PACs.
Jason Spero
Spero has been at Google for a decade since his previous company, AdMob, was acquired in 2010. He’s now vice president of something complicated, but for our purposes, he’s one of Google’s most reliable Democratic donors. He’s given thousands to California’s congressional delegation, including Harley Rouda and Katie Porter, and also gave $2,000 to Minnesota’s Rashida Tlaib. He’s an example of a company’s employees not necessarily supporting the political interests of their employer—Porter has been critical of Google for its allegedly monopolistic practices.
Like many in the Silicon Valley world, Spero gave $5,000 to Digidems and Tech for Campaigns, organizations that push Democratic campaigns to be more tech-savvy.
Graham Spencer
Spencer is a longtime tech industry figure—he founded Excite.com in the ’90s and joined Google in 2006 when another company he founded, JotSpot, was acquired by the search giant. (Today, he’s a managing partner at Google Ventures.) He’s not normally the most prolific donor but in mid-September, he went on a spree, donating tens of thousands—in chunks of $769 or $2,000—to dozens of House and Senate candidates.
He’s one of many donors that forms a tranche that’s well below the level of someone like Schmidt. Spencer may “only” give thousands at a time, but those thousands add up—particularly because there are a lot of relatively rich people like him who were inspired to donate in 2020. That was a big part of what gave Democrats a fundraising advantage this cycle. Schmidt will surely keep on donating beyond 2020, whether he serves a role in the Biden administration or not. But if people like Spencer don’t donate as heavily, Democrats could be in trouble in 2022.
