We found out in recent weeks that Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey likes to give donations to Democratic candidates for the US 2020 presidential race, and that a majority of donations made by Google’s employees have also gone to Democrats.
This is in keeping with the notion that Silicon Valley’s political bias is what a Vox report described as left-leaning.
Here, Microsoft is a bit of an outlier: according to the Federal Election Commission numbers cited by Vox’s property Recode, employees of this company, that is one of tech’s “original gangsters,” are more conservative, even when they pick their favorite Democrat.
And he is Joe Biden, who tops the list of donations received from those working for Microsoft with $25,558. However, during the first half of this year covered by the Commission’s reports, Microsoft employees have also given more money to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign compared to other tech giants: Googlers, for instance, spent only $5,621 to support Trump.
According to this, the president received the lowest number of donations from Twitter employees – zero dollars. Those working for Apple spent $3,526 towards the Trump campaign, while Kamala Harris tops their list, just like that of Twitter employees.
Trump also fared relatively well among Amazon employees ($9,638), who like Jay Inslee the most, while the president received only $1,031 from those employed by Facebook – who’s favorite, in turn, is Pete Buttigieg.
Curiously, the candidate who received the highest amount of donation money from Googlers in the first half of 2018 is Elizabeth Warren, whose political platform prominently includes breaking up of Big Tech, Google included.
And it’s precisely Microsoft – whose employees now stand out compared to other tech giants both in their support for Trump, and Biden – that’s mentioned by those Googlers who support Warren and her plans.
Recode writes that several of them credit the 1998 antitrust case against Microsoft for Google’s own massive growth – suggesting that Microsoft getting somewhat reined in by antitrust regulators at the time allowed competition and innovation, and ultimately, the likes of Google becoming tech behemoths in their own right.
