Washington Post: Tech giants led by Amazon, Facebook and Google spent nearly half a billion on lobbying over the past decade, new data shows. “Ten years ago, Google executives rarely spoke to Congress. Amazon employed just two of its own registered lobbyists in Washington. And Facebook had only recently graduated to a real office after running its D.C. operation out of an employee’s living room. Since then, though, these technology companies have evolved into some of the most potent political forces in the nation’s capital, a Washington Post analysis of new federal records reveals, with just seven tech giants accounting for nearly half a billion dollars in lobbying over the past decade.”