If you (Amazon, in this case) can put it that way, it seems like throwing them 10 or 20 thousand a year would simply be a good insurance policy! Any benefits you might get in goodwill and influence are a bonus.
But on a more serious note, it is crazy that between Google and Amazon they can not fund them with 50k each per year, so that they can pay people to work on this.
Specially Google, with Youtube, they can very easily pay them more. 100k~200k easily.
A rising tide lifts all yachts. If he had written the check, my instinct tells me, he would have enough for two yachts. Goodwill is an actual line item on 10Q's and 10K's. I don't know why companies think it's worth ignoring.