Economic Scene: Business Losing Clout in a G.O.P. Moving Right

How did corporate America lose control of the Republican Party?

From overhauling immigration laws to increasing spending on the nation’s aging infrastructure, big business leaders have seemed relatively powerless lately as the uncompromising Republicans they helped elect have steadfastly opposed some of their core legislative priorities.

The rift is not only unusual in light of the tight historical alignment between the business community and the G.O.P., but it is also outright incomprehensible after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed companies to spend unlimited amounts from their corporate treasuries on the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Scholars have proposed many reasons for the rise of the anti-government activists that are pulling the G.O.P. to the right, leaving it at odds with a business community used to compromising and seeking favors from government.

But what may be most surprising is how reluctant big business has been to put its money on the line. To put it mildly, if companies could purchase the Congress of their choice, it’s unlikely they would buy the gridlocked Congress we have. The seemingly inexorable rise of political partisans — mainly on the right, but on the left, too — suggests that corporate money may be playing a much smaller role in the political process than expected.

Concern about the potential consequences of Citizens United stem from a not unreasonable belief that businesses will do anything on this side of the law — and sometimes beyond it — to produce legislation that serves their corporate interests.

So when the Supreme Court opened the sluice gate in 2010 allowing unlimited campaign contributions, pretty much every liberal voice in the country believed that a flood of corporate cash was about to deliver the political system to the Republican Party.

It was, President Obama said, “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

Three years later, however, these fears have not quite materialized. Money is flowing to elections like never before. The 2012 elections cost some $6.3 billion, $1 billion more than the 2008 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that researches money and politics. Independent spending by outside groups on campaign advertisements and the like topped $1 billion last year.

Corporate America, however, accounted for a comparative trickle. Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University, points out in a recent working paper that companies openly spent about $75 million from their treasuries on federal elections last year.

Even if all the hidden money funneled into campaigns through private 501(c) organizations had come from businesses — unlikely given the contributions by noncorporate groups like Planned Parenthood and the N.R.A. — corporate spending would not reach $400 million, still a small share of the total.

Perhaps this should not be surprising. For companies, spending on elections can be risky. Business executives might prefer lobbying, where they spend far more than on campaign contributions, not because the limits are more relaxed but because swaying legislators on both sides of the aisle is more effective at getting what they want. And such lobbying is less likely to kindle anger among consumers, shareholders and other constituents than spending to change the outcome of elections.

“While Citizens alters the ability of corporations to contribute to campaigns, it does not alter their substantial risk in doing so,” the political scientists Wendy L. Hansen, Michael Rocca and Brittany Ortiz of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, argued in a recent study.

Still, corporations’ reluctance to open their checkbooks suggests an intriguing alternative explanation for the rise of Republicans who are willing to defy their will: companies may have spent too little. Their money was swamped by that of big individual donors who are more ideologically extreme. In 2012, the top 0.1 percent of donors contributed more than 44 percent of all campaign contributions. In 1980 their share of contributions was less than 10 percent.

Corporations have a pro-Republican bias, of course. But it is not quite as extreme as pop culture would have it, and is certainly less pronounced than organized labor’s pro-Democrat leanings.

Effective lobbying requires both Republican and Democratic friends. Political action committees run by businesses are known for spreading money on both sides of the partisan divide. They give to incumbents. They choose winners. They show little partisan loyalty.

In the 2006 elections, when the G.O.P. controlled Congress, corporate PACs gave 65 percent of their money to Republicans. In 2008 and 2010, after the Democrats had swept both the House and Senate, they split their contributions roughly fifty-fifty.

By contrast, substantial research in political science suggests that individual donors favor more ideological candidates and are less strategic in their giving. Big, frequent donors are particularly extreme.

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo

Boeing Is Moving Ahead With Updated 777

The company plans to add lightweight carbon-composite wings and new engines to the popular model to take advantage of technologies that it developed for its 787 Dreamliner and to cut fuel usage by perhaps 20 percent.

Boeing’s board approved the move to offer customers details about the capabilities and pricing of the plane. The decision suggests that the long-awaited redesign is close to becoming a reality.

Once several customers sign up, Boeing officials will go back to the board later this year for formal approval and money to start the project, known as the 777X.

Karen R. Crabtree, a Boeing spokeswoman, said any deals made now would be contingent on the board’s authorization of the plane.

“We have made great progress in our development work and have begun to discuss additional technical, pricing and schedule details with customers regarding the 777X, continuing to target entry into service near the end of the decade,” she said in statement. She added, “The timing of a decision to launch the program will depend on market response during this next phase of our discussions about the airplane.”

The 777, first flown in commercial service in 1995, holds a sweet spot in the growing commercial plane market. With only two engines, the various versions of the jet can carry more than 300 passengers over long distances, making it an economical workhorse for many airlines.

The move to upgrade the planes is an important moment for Boeing as it tries to retain its recent dominance in sales of twin-engine planes, which represent the vast middle of the size range for commercial jetliners.

Airlines are returning Boeing’s innovative 787 jets, which rely extensively on composite parts, to service after hazards with the lithium-ion batteries led to a three-month grounding. The 787s carry up to 250 people.

Airbus, Boeing’s main rival, is building the A350-XWB, its first jet making substantial use of composite parts, to compete with the 787 and the larger 777. Boeing also plans to build two larger versions of the 787.

Boeing would like to deliver the first of two new models of the 777 to customers by 2019.

The first model would probably seat about 400 people, while the second would hold about 350 passengers and might be ready in 2021.

Boeing has already said that General Electric will be the sole supplier of new, more fuel-efficient engines for the plane.

The airline Emirates, in particular, has pushed Boeing to move ahead with the 777, and hinted in early March that a decision was near.

‘Saturday Night Live’ Archives Moving to Yahoo

But it’s reality now, as the owner of the “S.N.L.” archive, Broadway Video, tries to wring a profit out of the old episodes. On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it had acquired the exclusive rights to classic clips from 1975 through 2012, effective in September. The clips will be removed from Hulu and NBC.com, where they currently reside, and be shown instead on Yahoo, which wants to share in the buzz the show creates.

The deal between Broadway Video and Yahoo highlights the jockeying among companies that want to have a library of online videos to call their own. A dizzying number of online video producers are pitching their programs to advertisers this month, ahead of the traditional television upfront sessions in May. While these Web programs’ quantity and quality are increasing quickly, there are doubts about whether the advertising dollars are.

“On one hand, digital video advertising is growing fast and its prominence is increasing,” said Clark Fredricksen of the research firm eMarketer. “On the other, compared to television, online video is an incredibly competitive market, where you have more companies fighting over far less.” Mr. Fredricksen’s company estimates that $4.1 billion will be spent on online video ads this year, in contrast to $66.4 billion on television ads.

“There are a handful of major conglomerates who split revenues from the huge TV-ad pie,” Mr. Fredricksen said, “while the digital video world features hundreds of companies fighting, comparatively, for scraps from the TV table.”

Attaching, barnaclelike, to television might be a way to stand out from the crowd. Yahoo, which is trying for a turnaround under its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, has content-sharing relationships with many major media companies, but its video hub, Yahoo Screen, has lagged rivals like Google, which owns YouTube.

Erin McPherson, a Yahoo vice president who oversees the company’s video business, said the company jumped at the “S.N.L.” opportunity. She said the “S.N.L.” clips would be “widely distributed” across Yahoo, suggesting a strategy that will go beyond the current Yahoo Screen site.

“Rather than competing with Hulu, Netflix or any other platform, we see this as a step toward adding scale and breadth to the great content we are already offering users,” Ms. McPherson said.

Yahoo and Broadway Video declined to comment on terms, but people with knowledge of the arrangement said access to the “S.N.L.” library had cost upward of $10 million a year in the past.

Hulu, the online video Web site owned by Comcast, The News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, enjoyed an immediate bump in traffic when it added “SNL” to its collection. These days, however, Hulu — which its owners are considering selling — is concentrating on other content. It will promote several of its forthcoming original series at an event for advertisers next week.

Under the deal announced on Wednesday, Hulu will still stream clips and full episodes from the current television season. Yahoo will be able to do that, too. But Yahoo will have the old “S.N.L.” clips all to itself, giving it something special to show off — although only for one year. The deal will be up for renegotiation at that point.

Jack Sullivan, chief executive of Broadway Video, said the deal would let “S.N.L.” increase its distribution internationally, since the clips of classic episodes have generally only been accessible in North America in the past.

For a company like Yahoo, “having TV-like offerings is really important,” said Mike Vorhaus, president of the digital media consulting firm Magid Advisors. That’s because online video ads have partly taken the place of Web display ads, sometimes called banner ads, in advertisers’ budgets; as Mr. Vorhaus put it, “You can only take so much banner money away before there’s no banner money left at all.”

“Now they kind of have to pursue TV money,” he added.

Along the way they’re becoming more like TV. Earlier this year, a sendup of dating reality shows created by Yahoo, “Burning Love,” was deemed worthy of running on the cable channel E! as well. Sony, another company that will be presenting to advertisers next week, was recognized for treating Jerry Seinfeld’s experimental Web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” like a TV series when it ordered a 24-episode second season.

And Netflix, the ad-free streaming service that so many other companies want to resemble, was praised for commissioning “House of Cards,” the Washington thriller that could have fit right in on HBO or AMC. On Wednesday night, Netflix released a long-term vision statement for investors that summed up why it and so many of its competitors are optimistic about their chances: “While Internet TV is only a very small percent of video viewing today, we think it will grow every year,” it said, citing faster Internet speeds, sales of Internet-connected TV sets, improvements to TV apps and the possibilities for personalized online video ads.

The competition for Internet TV viewing, it concluded, “is just beginning.”

Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf

Google’s software for businesses, Google Apps, consists of applications for document writing, collaboration, and text and video communications — all cloud-based, so that none of the software is on an office worker’s computer. Google has been promoting the idea for more than six years, and it seemed that it was going to appeal mostly to small businesses and tech start-ups.

But the notion is catching on with larger enterprises. In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it.

One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.

Many companies that sell software over the cloud add features without raising prices, but also break from traditional industry practice by rarely offering discounts from the list price.

Microsoft’s Office suite of software, which does not include e-mail, is installed on a desktop PC or laptop. In 2013, the list price for businesses will be $400 per computer, but many companies pay half that after negotiating a volume deal.

At the same time, Microsoft has built its business on raising prices for extra features and services. The 2013 version of Office, for example, costs up to $50 more than its predecessor.

“Google is getting traction” on Microsoft, said Melissa Webster, an analyst with IDC. “Its ‘good enough’ product has become pretty good. It looks like 2013 is going to be the year for content and collaboration in the cloud.”

Microsoft has also jumped on the office-in-the-cloud trend. In June 2011, it released Office 365, and now offers its software in both a cloud version and a hybrid version that uses cloud computing and conventional servers. Office 365 starts at a list price of $72 a year, per person, and can cost as much as $240 a person annually, in versions that offer many more features and software development capabilities. Microsoft says it offers more than Google for the money, but the product has not won many converts from Google.

In a recent report, Gartner, the information technology research company, called Google “the only strong competitor” to Microsoft in cloud-based business productivity software, though it warned that “enterprise concerns may not be of paramount importance to the search giant.”

Google is tight-lipped about how many people use Google Apps, saying only that in June more than five million businesses were using it, up from four million in late 2011. Almost all these companies are tiny, but in early December Google announced that even companies with fewer than 10 employees, which used to get Google Apps free, would have to pay.

Google’s revenue from Apps, according to a former executive who asked not to be named in order to maintain good relations with Google, amounted to perhaps $1 billion of the $37.9 billion Google earned in 2011.

Shaw Industries, a carpet maker in Dalton, Ga., with about 30,000 employees, switched to Google Apps this year for communication tools like e-mail and videoconferencing. Jim Nielsen, the company’s manager of enterprise technology, calculated that using Google instead of similar Microsoft products would cost, over seven years, about one-thirteenth Microsoft’s price.

Shaw is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren E. Buffett, but the close friendship of Mr. Buffett and Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, did not sway Mr. Nielsen. “When you add it up, the numbers are pretty compelling,” he said.

In addition to the lower price, Google has simplicity in pricing. Mr. Nielsen said he had to sort through 11 pricing models to figure out what he would pay Microsoft.