Google, Trying to Endear Itself to Europe, Spreads Cash Around

A yearlong digital training course for Irish high school teachers started in 2014. A fund to help European news outlets adapt to the web popped up in 2015. And in March, a virtual reality exhibition began at a Belgian museum to showcase a Renaissance painter. All these projects are aimed at supporting European culture and education, helping the region embrace the fast-changing online world. And all are financed by Google.

Google has been staging a full-court press in Europe to finance everything from start-up offices to YouTube-sponsored music concerts, trying to remake its image in the region as it battles a mounting list of regulatory woes. Those efforts represent a campaign of “soft lobbying” where instead of, or alongside, paying registered lobbyists to advocate its case in the corridors of power, a company looks to change the minds of the public at large. In Google’s case, experts say, its push equates to an almost unprecedented effort by a United States tech company to change the perceptions of Europeans, many of whom still see it as an American interloper that does not play by the rules. Google’s soft lobbying efforts are by no means unique, and have filled a funding gap that governments and European rivals are unwilling, or incapable, of matching. But the company has ramped up its campaign in recent years, earmarking about $450 million from 2015 to 2017 — based on Google’s public filings and industry estimates of its activities — to revamp its reputation with Europeans and, more important, the region’s policy makers who have the power to issue fines totaling billions of dollars.