Susan Molinari in the cafe car area at Google's offices in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 15, 2014. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The top public policy official at Google in Washington, D.C., is stepping down from her post, as Axios was first to report on Friday.

Susan Molinari, who heads Google's D.C. office as vice president of public policy for the Americas and who formerly served as a Republican congresswoman for New York, will take on an advisory role at the tech company. She joined Google in 2012 from her government affairs consulting firm Susan Molinari Strategies.

Molinari served as a U.S. congresswoman for Staten Island from 1990 to 1997, and after being elected to the House GOP majority leadership, was one of the highest-ranking women in the Republican Party.

Following her 1997 resignation, she briefly co-hosted a show on CBS. She also served as a senior principal in the government relations, advocacy and strategy section of Bracewell & Giuliani (now Bracewell) in Washington, D.C., and as chairwoman and CEO of The Washington Group.

During her time as policy head, Google parent company Alphabet has outspent any other individual company on lobbying by millions of dollars. In both 2017 and 2018, Google was the top-spending individual company, with $16,760,000 spent on lobbying in 2018.

Alphabet's highest-paid outside lobbyist firms for the past year include Prime Policy Group, Simmons & Russell Group, S-3 Group, Lugar Hellmann Group, JGB & Associates, Gephardt Group, Crossroads Strategies and Cornerstone Government Affairs. Among law firms, those hired to do lobby work include Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Holland & Knight and Hunton Andrews Kurth.

The news of Molinari's move comes amid growing bipartisan criticism of Google, at home and abroad.

On Thursday, thousands of Google employees from around the world staged a walkout to protest the company's protection of powerful men, following a New York Times report alleging high-ranking men at the company, including Alphabet CLO David Drummond, had inappropriate relationships with subordinates or committed sexual misconduct with few repercussions.

In September, Google irked members of the Senate Intelligence Committee by refusing to send CEO Sundar Pichai to a hearing on foreign interference in U.S. politics and elections. Google's offer to send chief legal officer Kent Walker was rejected, and the company opted to leave an empty seat at the hearing.

Later that month, at a hearing for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the company's chief privacy officer Keith Enright faced questions about a rumored Google project in China that would offer censored search results, and about Google's withdrawal from its artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon.

The company has also dealt with privacy and antitrust concerns in the U.S. and abroad. In July, Google received a massive $5 billion fine from the European Commission for antitrust violations.

According to Axios, Molinari said she wanted to transition out of her public policy role and take a step back, in the wake of her husband's retirement, her daughter's college graduation and the death of her father. In her new role, she'll report to Google's Global Head of Policy Karan Bhatia, who was hired in June 2018.

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