Google Tax Avoidance
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Criticism of Google includes concern for
tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdict ...
, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others'
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
and collaboration with the US military on
Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...
to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly,
restraint of trade Restraints of trade is a common law doctrine relating to the enforceability of contractual restrictions on freedom to conduct business. It is a precursor of modern competition law. In an old leading case of '' Mitchel v Reynolds'' (1711) Lord S ...
,
antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
,
patent infringement Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may v ...
, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
's parent company,
Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and sev ...
, is an American multinational public corporation invested in
Internet search A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
,
cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...
, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its
Google Ads Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
(formerly AdWords) program. Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"; this mission, and the means used to accomplish it, have raised concerns among the company's critics. Much of the criticism pertains to issues that have not yet been addressed by
cyber law Information technology law (also called cyberlaw) concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and so ...
. Shona Ghosh, a journalist for ''
Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...
'', noted that an increasing digital
resistance movement A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objective ...
against Google has grown.


Tax avoidance

Google cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the period of 2007 to 2009 using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
and The
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
to Bermuda. Afterwards, the company started to send £8 billion in profits a year to
Bermuda ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = National song , song = " Hail to Bermuda" , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , mapsize2 = , map_caption2 = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = , e ...
. Google's income shifting—involving strategies known to lawyers as the "
Double Irish The Double Irish arrangement was a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax avoidance tool used mostly by United States multinationals since the late 1980s to avoid corporate taxation on non-U.S. profits. It was the largest tax ...
" and the "
Dutch Sandwich Dutch Sandwich is a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax tool, used mostly by U.S. multinationals to avoid incurring EU withholding taxes on untaxed profits as they were being moved to non-EU tax havens (such as the Bermuda bla ...
"—helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. According to economist and member of the PvdA delegation inside the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D) Paul Tang, the EU lost, from 2013 to 2015, a loss estimated to be 3.955 billion Euros from Google. When comparing to other countries outside the EU, the EU is only taxing Google with a rate of 0,36 – 0,82% of their revenue (approx. 25-35% of their EBT) whereas this rate is near 8% in countries outside the EU. Even if a rate of 2 to 5% - as suggested by
ECOFIN The Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) is one of the oldest configurations of the Council of the European Union and is composed of the economics and finance ministers of the 27 European Union member states, as well as Budget Minist ...
council - would have been applied during this period (2013-2015), a fraud of this rate from Facebook would have meant a loss from 1.262 to 3.155 billion euros in the EU. Google has been accused by a number of countries of avoiding paying tens of billions of dollars of tax through a convoluted scheme of inter-company licensing agreements and transfers to
tax haven A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...
s. For example, Google has used highly contrived and artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in
corporate tax A corporate tax, also called corporation tax or company tax, is a direct tax imposed on the income or capital of corporations or analogous legal entities. Many countries impose such taxes at the national level, and a similar tax may be imposed at ...
owed by its UK operations. On May 15, 2013,
Margaret Hodge Dame Margaret Eve Hodge, Lady Hodge, (née Oppenheimer, formerly Watson; born 8 September 1944) is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Barking since 1994. A member of the Labour Party, she previously served as ...
, the chair of the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
Public Accounts Committee, accused Google of being "calculated and ..unethical" over its use of the scheme. Google Chairman
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
has claimed that this scheme of Google is "capitalism", and that he was "very proud" of it. In November 2012, the
UK government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_es ...
announced plans to investigate Google, along with
Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...
and
Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
, for possible
tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdict ...
. In 2015, the UK Government introduced a new law intended to penalize Google's and other large multinational corporations' artificial tax avoidance. On 20 January 2016, Google announced that it would pay £130m in back taxes to settle the investigation. However, only 8 days later, it was announced that Google could end up paying more, and UK tax officials were under investigation for what has been termed a "sweetheart deal" for Google.


Antitrust


European Union

The
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
has pursued several competition law cases against Google, namely: * Complaint that Google abused its position as a dominant search engine to favor its own services over those of competitors. In particular, Google operated a free
comparison shopping website A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare produ ...
Froogle, which it abandoned in favor of a paid-placement-only site called
Google Shopping Google Shopping, formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle, is a Google service created by Craig Nevill-Manning which allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendor ...
. Other comparison sites complained of a precipitous drop in web traffic due to changes in the Google search algorithm, and some were driven out of business. The investigation began in 2010 and concluded in July 2017 with a €2.42 billion fine against the parent company Alphabet, and an order to change its practices within 90 days. * Complaint opened in 2015 that the dominance of the
Android operating system Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of deve ...
was abused to make it difficult for competing third-party apps and search engines to be pre-installed on mobile phones. (See European Union vs. Google.) * Complaint opened in 2016 that Google abused its market dominance to prevent competing advertising companies to sell ads to websites already using
Google AdSense Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...


U.S. antitrust issues

In June 2015, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of
antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
concerns by the
U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2018. In testimony before a
U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
panel in September 2011,
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
, Google's chairman, said that "the Internet is the ultimate level playing field" where users were "one click away" from competitors. Nonetheless, Senator Kohl asked Schmidt if Google's market share constituted a monopolya special power dominant for his company. Schmidt acknowledged that Google's market share was akin to a monopoly, but noted the complexity of the law. During the hearing,
Mike Lee Michael Shumway Lee (born June 4, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. Lee began his career as a clerk for the U ...
, Republican of Utah, accused Google of cooking its search results to favor its own services. Schmidt replied, "Senator, I can assure we haven't cooked anything." In testimony before the same Senate panel, Jeffrey Katz and
Jeremy Stoppelman Jeremy Stoppelman (born November 10, 1977) is an American business executive. He is the CEO of Yelp, which he co-founded in 2004. Stoppelman obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champai ...
, the chief executives from Google's competitors
Nextag Nextag was an independent price comparison service website for products, travel, and education. It started originally as a website where buyers and sellers could negotiate prices for computers and electronics products. Since 2000, the current bus ...
and
Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San Fra ...
, said that Google tilts search results in its own favor, limiting choice and stifling competition. In October 2012, it was reported that the
U.S. Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...
staff were preparing a recommendation that the government sue Google on antitrust grounds. The areas of concern include accusations of manipulating the search results to favor Google services such as
Google Shopping Google Shopping, formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle, is a Google service created by Craig Nevill-Manning which allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendor ...
for buying goods and
Google Places Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
for advertising local restaurants and businesses; whether Google's automated advertising marketplace,
AdWords Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
, discriminates against advertisers from competing online commerce services like comparison shopping sites and consumer review Web sites; whether Google's contracts with smartphone makers and carriers prevent them from removing or modifying Google products, such as its
Android operating system Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of deve ...
or
Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. The ...
; and Google's use of its smartphone patents. A likely outcome of the antitrust investigations is a negotiated settlement where Google would agree not to discriminate in favor of its products over smaller competitors. Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation during a period which the co-founder of Google,
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...
, had met with individuals at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
and the Federal Trade Commission, leading to voluntary changes by Google; since January 2009 to March 2015 employees of Google have met with officials in the White House about 230 times according to ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''.


Android

On April 20, 2016, the European Union filed a formal antitrust complaint against Google's leverage over Android vendors, alleging that the mandatory bundling of the entire suite of proprietary Google software, hindered the ability for competing search providers to be integrated into Android and that barring vendors from producing devices running forks of Android both constituted anti-competitive practices. In June 2018, the European Commission determined a $5 billion fine for Google regarding the April 2016 complaints. In August 2016, Google was fined US$6.75 million by the Russian
Federal Antimonopoly Service The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) (russian: Федеральная антимонопольная служба России, ФАС России) is the federal-level executive governmental organ that controls the execution of the ...
(FAS) under similar allegations by
Yandex Yandex LLC (russian: link=no, Яндекс, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps ...
. On April 16, 2018, Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, Aaqib Javeed vs. Google LLC & Ors. resulted in the
Competition Commission of India The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is the chief national competition regulator in India. It is a statutory body within the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and is responsible for enforcing the Competition Act, 2002 to promote competition ...
ordering a wider probe investigation order against Google Android illegal business practices. The investigations arm of the CCI should complete the wider probe in the case within 150 days, the order said, though such cases at the watchdog typically drag on for years. The CCI also said the role of any Google executive in the alleged abuse of the Android platform should also be examined.


"Jedi Blue" advertising market monopolization in collusion with Facebook

According to the group of 15 state attorneys general suing Google for antitrust issues, Google and Facebook entered into a price-fixing agreement termed Jedi Blue to monopolize the online advertising market and prevent the entry of the fairer
header bidding Header bidding is a programmatic advertising technique in which publishers bid on multiple advertising exchanges in real time. Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Sea ...
method of advertisement sales on any major advertising platform. The agreement consisted of Facebook using the Google-managed system for bidding on and managing online ads in exchange for preferential rates and priority on prime ad placement. This allowed Google to retain its profitable monopoly over online ad exchanges, while saving Facebook billions of dollars on attempts to build competing systems. Over 200 newspapers have sued Google and Facebook to recover losses incurred by the collusion. Google admitted that the deal contained, "a provision governing cooperation between Google and Facebook in the event of certain government investigations." Google has an internal team called gTrade dedicated to maximizing Google's advertising profits, reportedly using insider information, price fixing, and leveraging Google's relative monopoly positions.


Criticism of search engine


Possible misuse of search results

In 2006/2007, a group of Austrian researchers observed a tendency to misuse the Google engine as a "reality interface". Ordinary users as well as journalists tend to rely on the first pages of Google Search, assuming that everything not listed there is either not important or simply does not exist. The researchers say that "Google has become the main interface for our whole reality. To be precise: with the Google interface, the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools".''Report on dangers and opportunities posed by large search engines, particularly Google''
, H. Maurer (Ed), Graz University of Technology, Austria, September 30, 2007, 187 pp. Retrieved October 3, 2013.
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
, Google's chief executive, said in a 2007 interview with the ''Financial Times'': "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?. Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with ''The Wall Street Journal'': "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions; they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." Numerous companies and individuals, for example, MyTriggers.com and transport tycoon Sir Brian Souter, have voiced concerns regarding the fairness of Google's PageRank and search results after their web sites disappeared from Google's first-page results. In the case of MyTriggers.com, the Ohio-based shopping comparison search site accused Google of favoring its own services in search results (although the judge eventually ruled that the site failed to show harm to other similar businesses).


Danger of ranking manipulation

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According ...
, Google's page ranking algorithm, can and has been manipulated for political and humorous reasons. To illustrate the view that Google's search engine could be subjected to manipulation, Google Watch implemented a Google bomb by linking the phrase "out-of-touch executives" to Google's own page on its corporate management. The attempt was mistakenly attributed to disgruntled Google employees by ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', which later printed a correction. Daniel Brandt started the Google Watch website and has criticized Google's
PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According ...
algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites. Chris Beasley, who started Google Watch-Watch, disagrees, saying that Mr. Brandt overstates the amount of discrimination that new websites face and that new websites will naturally rank lower when the ranking is based on a site's "reputation". In Google's world, a site's reputation is in part determined by how many and which other sites link to it (links from sites with a "better" reputation of their own carry more weight). Since new sites will seldom be as heavily linked as older more established sites, they aren't as well known, won't have as much of a reputation, and will receive a lower page ranking. In testimony before a
U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
panel in September 2011, Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of
NexTag Nextag was an independent price comparison service website for products, travel, and education. It started originally as a website where buyers and sellers could negotiate prices for computers and electronics products. Since 2000, the current bus ...
, said that Google's business interests conflict with its engineering commitment to an open-for-all Internet and that: "Google doesn't play fair. Google rigs its results, biasing in favor of
Google Shopping Google Shopping, formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle, is a Google service created by Craig Nevill-Manning which allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendor ...
and against competitors like us." Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief of
Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San Fra ...
, said sites like his have to cooperate with Google because it is the gateway to so many users and "Google then gives its own product preferential treatment." In earlier testimony at the same hearing,
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
, Google's chairman, said that Google does not "cook the books" to favor its own products and services."Google's Competitors Square Off Against Its Leader"
Steve Lohr, ''The New York Times'', September 21, 2011


Portrayals of race and gender

In 2013, Emily McManus, managing editor for
TED.com TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
, searched for "english major who taught herself calculus" which prompted Google to ask,  "Did you mean: english major who taught ''himself'' calculus?" Her tweet of the incident gained traction online. One response included a screengrab of a search for "how much is a wnba ticket?" to which the auto-correct feature suggested, "how much is an nba ticket?" Google responded directly to McManus and explained that the phrase "taught himself calculus" appeared about 282,000 times, whereas the phrase "taught herself calculus" appeared about 4,000 times. The company also made note of its efforts to bring more women into STEM fields. In 2015, a man tweeted a screengrab showing that Google Photos had tagged two
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
people as gorillas. Google apologized, saying they were "appalled and genuinely sorry" and was "working on longer-term fixes." An investigation by
WIRED ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
two years later showed that the company's solution has been to censor searches for "gorilla," "chimp," "chimpanzee," and "monkey."


Google Shopping rankings

In late May 2012, Google announced that they will no longer be maintaining a strict separation between search results and advertising. Google Shopping (formerly known as Froogle) would be replaced with a nearly identical interface, according to the announcement, but only paid advertisers would be listed instead of the neutral aggregate listings shown previously. Furthermore, rankings would be determined primarily by which advertisers place the highest "bid", though the announcement does not elaborate on this process. The transition was completed in the fall of 2012. As a result of this change to Google Shopping,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
, who operates the competing search engine
Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...
, launched a public information campaign titled
Scroogled ''Scroogled'' (a portmanteau of "screwed" and "Google") was a Microsoft attack advertising campaign that ran between November 2012 and 2014. Created by Mark Penn, the campaign sought primarily to attack a competing company, Google, by pointing ...
. The ad campaign was developed by leading political campaign strategist
Mark Penn Mark J. Penn (born January 15, 1954) is an American businessman, pollster, political strategist, and author. Penn is chairman and chief executive officer of Stagwell, a marketing group created upon the merger of Stagwell Marketing Group—a priv ...
. It is unclear how consumers have reacted to this move. Critics charge that Google has effectively abandoned its "
Don't be evil "Don't be evil" is a phrase that was used in Google's corporate code of conduct, which it also formerly preceded as a motto. Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the r ...
" motto and that small businesses will be unable to compete against their larger counterparts. There is also concern that consumers who did not see this announcement will be unaware that they are now looking at paid advertisements and that the top results are no longer determined solely based on relevance but instead will be manipulated according to which company paid the most.


Copyright issues


Google Print, Books, and Library

Google's ambitious plans to scan millions of books and make them readable through its search engine have been criticized for
copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
. The
Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is an international trade association of non-profit publishers created in 1972. It is the largest association of scholarly and professional publishers in the world, with nearl ...
and the
Association of American University Presses The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) is an association of mostly, but not exclusively, North American university presses. It is based in New York City. Until December 2017, it was known as the Association of American University Presses ...
both issued statements strongly opposing
Google Print Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
, stating that "Google, an enormously successful company, claims a sweeping right to appropriate the property of others for its own commercial use unless it is told, case by case and instance by instance, not to."


China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS)

In a separate dispute in November 2009, the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), which protects Chinese writers' copyrights, accused Google of scanning 18,000 books by 570 Chinese writers without authorization, for its Google Books library. Toward the end of 2009 representatives of the CWWCS said talks with Google about copyright issues are progressing well, that first they "want Google to admit their mistake and apologize", then talk about compensation, while at the same time they "don't want Google to give up China in its digital library project". On November 20, 2009, Google agreed to provide a list of Chinese books it had scanned, but did not admit having "infringed" copyright laws. In a January 9, 2010 statement the head of Google Books in the Asia-Pacific said "communications with Chinese writers have not been good enough" and apologized to the writers.


Links and cached data

Kazaa and the
Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...
have used the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA) to demand that Google remove references to allegedly
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
ed material on their sites. Search engines such as Google's that link to sites in "good faith" fall under the safe harbor provisions of the
Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) is United States federal law that creates a conditional 'safe harbor' for online service providers (OSP) (a group which includes internet service providers (ISP) and other Inter ...
which is part of DMCA. If they remove links to infringing content after receiving a take down notice, they are not liable. Google removes links to infringing content when requested, provided that supporting evidence is supplied. However, it is sometimes difficult to judge whether or not certain sites are infringing and Google (and other search engines) will sometimes refuse to remove web pages from its index. To complicate matters there have been conflicting rulings from U.S. courts on whether simply linking to infringing content constitutes "contributory infringement" or not. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' has complained that the caching of their content during a web crawl, a feature utilized by search engines including
Google Web Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...
, violates copyright. Google observes Internet standard mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled via the
robots.txt The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visit. Th ...
file, which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results, or via META tags, which allow a content editor to specify whether a document can be crawled or archived, or whether the links on the document can be followed. The U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled that Google's caches do not constitute copyright infringement under
American law The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as va ...
in '' Field v. Google'' and ''Parker v. Google''. On February 20, 2017, Google agreed to a voluntary United Kingdom code of practice obligating it to demote links to copyright-infringing content in its search results.


Google Map Maker

Google Map Maker Google Map Maker is a defunct map editing service launched by Google in June 2008. In geographies where it is hard to find providers of good map data, user contributions were used to increase map quality. Changes to Google Map Maker were intende ...
allows user-contributed data to be put into the
Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
service, similar to
OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
it includes concepts such as organising mapping parties and mapping for humanitarian efforts. It has been criticized for taking work done for free by the general public and claiming commercial ownership of it without returning any contributions back to the
commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...
as their restrictive license makes it incompatible with most open projects by preventing commercial use or use by competitive services.


Google Pinyin

Google allegedly used code from Chinese company
Sohu Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other ser ...
's
Sogou Pinyin Sogou Pinyin Method () is a popular Chinese Pinyin input method editor developed by Sohu.com, Inc. under its search engine brand name, Sogou. Sogou Pinyin is a dominant input software in China. By July 2011, Sogou Pinyin had an 83.6% penetrati ...
for its own
input method editor An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse o ...
,
Google Pinyin Google Pinyin IME ( zh, t=谷歌拼音輸入法, s=谷歌拼音输入法, p=Gǔgē Pīnyīn Shūrùfǎ) was an input method developed by Google China Labs. The tool was made publicly available on April 4, 2007. Aside from Pinyin input, it also in ...
.


Where's the Fair Use?

On February 16, 2016, internet
reviewer A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indi ...
Doug Walker (The
Nostalgia Critic ''Nostalgia Critic'' is an American review comedy web series created, directed by and starring web comedian Douglas "Doug" Walker. The series initially launched on YouTube on July 3, 2007, before moving to Walker's own site, That Guy with the G ...
) posted a video about his concerns related to YouTube's current copyright-claiming system, which was apparently being tipped in favor of claimants rather than creators despite many of those videos being reported as covered under
Fair Use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
laws. The video featured stories of other YouTubers' experiences with the copyright system, including fellow
Channel Awesome Channel Awesome, Inc. is an American online media production company based in Lombard, Illinois. The company was created in 2008 by Mike Michaud, Mike Ellis, and Bhargav Dronamraju. Channel Awesome operated the ''That Guy with the Glasses'' ...
producer Brad Jones, who received a strike on his channel for uploading a film review that took place in a parked car and contained no footage from the film itself. In the video, Walker encouraged others to spread the message using the
hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
#WTFU (Where's the Fair Use?) on social media. The hashtag spread among multiple YouTubers, who gave their support to Walker and Channel Awesome and relaying their own stories of issues with YouTube's copyright system, including Dan Murrell of
Screen Junkies Screen Junkies is an online movie magazine and YouTube channel, owned and operated by Fandom, that focuses primarily on movies and television. Screen Junkies produce numerous shows now spread across two YouTube channels, including ''The Screen J ...
, GradeAUnderA, and
Let's Play A Let's Play (LP) is a video (or screenshots accompanied by text) documenting the playthrough of a video game, often including commentary and/or a camera view of the gamer's face. A Let's Play differs from a video game walkthrough or strateg ...
producers Mark Fishbach (
Markiplier Mark Edward Fischbach ( ; born June 28, 1989), also known as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In addition to uplo ...
) and Seán William McLoughlin (
Jacksepticeye Seán William McLoughlin (born 7 February 1990), better known as Jacksepticeye, is an Irish YouTuber, best known for his vlogs and comedic Let's Play series. , his channel has over 15.7 billion views and 28.9 million subscribers, and is the mo ...
). Ten days later, on February 26, 2016, YouTube CEO
Susan Wojcicki Susan Diane Wojcicki ( ; born July 5, 1968) is a Polish-American business executive who is the CEO of YouTube. Her net worth was estimated at $765 million in 2022. Wojcicki has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years. She became invol ...
tweeted a link to a post from the YouTube Help Forum and thanked the community for bringing the issue to their attention. The post, written by a member of the YouTube Policy Team named Spencer (no last name was given), stated that they will be working to strengthen communication between creators and YouTube Support and "improvements to increase transparency into the status of monetization claims."


Privacy

Google's March 1, 2012 privacy change enables the company to share data across a wide variety of services. This includes embedded services in millions of third-party websites using AdSense and Analytics. The policy was widely criticized as creating an environment that discourages Internet innovation by making Internet users more fearful online. In December 2009, after privacy concerns were raised, Google's CEO,
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
, declared: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the
Patriot Act The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) was a landmark Act of the United States Congress, signed into law by President George W. Bush. The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropr ...
and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
Privacy International Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its c ...
has raised concerns regarding the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government. In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking. At the Techonomy conference in 2010, Eric Schmidt predicted that "true transparency and no anonymity" is the way forward for the internet: "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a erifiedname service for people. Governments will demand it." He also said that "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!" In the summer of 2016, Google quietly dropped its ban on personally identifiable info in its
DoubleClick DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...
ad service. Google's privacy policy was changed to state it "may" combine web-browsing records obtained through DoubleClick with what the company learns from the use of other Google services. While new users were automatically opted-in, existing users were asked if they wanted to opt-in, and it remains possible to opt-out by going to the Activity controls in the My Account page of a Google account. ''
ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...
'' states that "The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct." Google contacted ''ProPublica'' to correct the fact that it doesn't "currently" use Gmail keywords to target web ads. Google has a US$1.2 billion artificial intelligence and
surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
contract with the
Israeli military The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branc ...
known as
Project Nimbus Project Nimbus () is a cloud computing project of the Israeli government and its military. The Israeli Finance Ministry announced April 2021, that the contract is to provide "the government, the defense establishment, and others with an all-encom ...
. According to Google employees, the Israeli military could use this technology to expand its surveillance of Palestinians living in occupied territories. In what has been described as "retaliation for publicly criticizing the contract," Google relocated an outspoken employee overseas. Other Palestinian employees have described an "institutionalised bias" within the company.


Disha Ravi's arrest

Google shared environment activist
Disha Ravi Disha Annappa Ravi (born 1998/99, Bangalore) is an Indian youth climate change activist and a founder of Fridays For Future India. Her arrest on 13 February 2021 for an alleged involvement with an online toolkit related to Greta Thunberg and the ...
's document on Google Docs with the Delhi police which led to her arrest.


Censorship

Google has been criticized for various instances of censoring its search results, many times in compliance with the laws of various countries, most notably while it operated in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
from January 2006 to March 2010.


Web search

As of December 12, 2012, Google's SafeSearch feature applies to image searches in the United States. Prior to the change, three SafeSearch settings—"on", "moderate", and "off"—were available to users. Following the change, two "Filter explicit results" settings—"on" and "off"—were newly established. The former and new "on" settings are similar and exclude explicit images from search results. The new "off" setting still permits explicit images to appear in search results, but users need to enter more specific search requests, and no direct equivalent of the old "off" setting exists following the change. The change brings image search results into line with Google's existing settings for web and video search. Some users have stated that the lack of a completely unfiltered option amounts to "censorship" by Google. A Google spokesperson disagreed, saying that Google is "not censoring any adult content", and "
ants Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,00 ...
to show users exactly what they are looking for—but we aim not to show sexually explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them." The search term "
bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
" was blacklisted for
Instant Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. Th ...
until 2012, when it was removed at the request of the
BiNet USA BiNet USA (officially Bi/Net USA, The Bisexual Network of the USA Inc.) was an American national nonprofit bisexual community whose mission was to "facilitate the development of a cohesive network of bisexual communities, promote bisexual visibi ...
advocacy organization.


China

Google has been involved in the censorship of certain sites in specific countries and regions. Until March 2010, Google adhered to the Internet censorship policies of China, enforced by filters colloquially known as "The
Great Firewall of China The Great Firewall (''GFW''; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected for ...
". Google.cn search results were filtered to remove some information perceived to be harmful to the People's Republic of China (PRC). Google claimed that some censorship is necessary in order to keep the Chinese government from blocking Google entirely, as occurred in 2002. The company claims it did not plan to give the government information about users who search for blocked content, and will inform users that content has been restricted if they attempt to search for it. As of 2009, Google was the only major China-based search engine to explicitly ''inform'' the user when search results are blocked or hidden. As of December 2012, Google no longer informs the user of possible censorship for certain queries during search. Some Chinese Internet users were critical of Google for assisting the Chinese government in repressing its own citizens, particularly those dissenting against the government and advocating for human rights."Google: Stop participating in China's Propaganda"
Students for a Free Tibet, Yahoo! Groups, February 1, 2006
Furthermore, Google had been denounced and called hypocritical by Free Media Movement for agreeing to China's demands while simultaneously fighting the United States government's requests for similar information. Google China had also been condemned by
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
,
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
and
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
. In 2009,
China Central Television China Central Television (CCTV) is a Chinese state- and political party-owned broadcaster controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its 50 different channels broadcast a variety of programing to more than one billion viewers in six lan ...
,
Xinhua News Agency Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
, and ''
People's Daily The ''People's Daily'' () is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The newspaper provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the CCP. In addition to its main Chinese-language ...
'' all reported on Google's "dissemination of obscene information", and People's Daily claimed that "Google's 'don't be evil' motto becomes a fig leaf". The Chinese government imposed administrative penalties to Google China, and demanded a reinforcement of censorship.
English translation
In 2010, according to a leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, there were reports that the Chinese Politburo directed the intrusion of Google's computer systems in a worldwide coordinated campaign of computer sabotage and the attempt to access information about Chinese dissidents, carried out by "government operatives, public security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government." The report suggested that it was part of an ongoing campaign in which attackers have "broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the
Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current Dal ...
and American businesses since 2002." In response to the attack, Google announced that they were "no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all." On March 22, 2010, after talks with Chinese authorities failed to reach an agreement, the company redirected its censor-complying
Google China Google China is a subsidiary of Google. A popular search engine, most services offered by Google China were blocked by the Great Firewall in the People's Republic of China. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobil ...
service to its Google Hong Kong service, which is outside the jurisdiction of Chinese censorship laws. From the business perspective, many recognize that the move was likely to affect Google's profits: "Google is going to pay a heavy price for its move, which is why it deserves praise for refusing to censor its service in China." However, at least as of March 23, 2010, "The Great Firewall" continues to censor search results from the Hong Kong portal, www.google.com.hk (as it does with the US portal, www.google.com) for controversial terms such as "
Falun gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...
" and "the June 4 incident" (
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
). In 2018, Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, said there was a, "crisis of repression unfolding across China and territories it controls." and that, "it is shocking to know that Google is planning to return to China and has been building a tool that will help the Chinese authorities engage in censorship and surveillance." She further noted that "Google should be using its incredible wealth, talent, and resources to work with us to find solutions to lift people up and help ease their suffering — not assisting the Chinese government to keep people in chains."


Turkey

Google has been involved in censorship of Google Maps satellite imagery countrywide affecting Android and iOS apps using .com, .tr, and .tld automatically. Desktop users can easily evade this censorship by just removing .tr, and .tld from the URL but the same technique is impossible with smartphone apps.


Russia

Google removed the ''
Smart Voting Smart Voting ( rus, Умное голосование, Umnoye golosovaniye) is a tactical voting strategy put forward by the team of Alexei Navalny with the aim of depriving the ruling United Russia party of votes in regional and federal electi ...
'' app from the Play Store before the
2021 Russian legislative election Legislative elections were held in Russia from 17 to 19 September 2021. At stake were 450 seats in the 8th convocation of the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly. Going into the elections, United Russia was the ruling party aft ...
. The application, which had been created by the associates of the imprisoned opposition leader
Alexei Navalny Alexei Anatolievich Navalny ( rus, links=no, Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, , ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj; born 4 June 1976) is a Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia, Russian opposition ...
, offered voting advice for all voting districts in Russia. It was removed after a meeting with Russian Federation Council officials on 16 September 2021. The Wired reported that several Google employees were threatened with criminal prosecution. Google's actions were condemned as political censorship by Russian opposition figures. In March 2022, Google removed an app, designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin, from its Play Store.


AdSense/AdWords

In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating "Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations." The policy was later changed. In April 2008, Google refused to run ads for a UK Christian group opposed to abortion, explaining that "At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'abortion and religion-related content.'" The UK Christian group sued Google for discrimination, and as a result, in September 2008 Google changed its policy and anti-abortion ads were allowed. In August 2008, Google closed the AdSense account of a site that carried a negative view of
Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data indi ...
, the second closing of such a site within 3 months. It is not certain if the account revocations actually were on the grounds of anti-religious content, however, the cases have raised questions about Google's terms in regards to AdSense/AdWords. The AdSense policy states that "Sites displaying Google ads may not include advocacy against any individual, group, or organization", which allows Google to revoke the above-mentioned AdSense accounts. In May 2011, Google cancelled the AdWord advertisement purchased by a Dublin sex worker rights group named "Turn Off the Blue Light" (TOBL), claiming that it represented an "egregious violation" of company ad policy by "selling adult sexual services". However, TOBL is a nonprofit campaign for sex worker rights and is not advertising or selling adult sexual services. In July, after TOBL members held a protest outside Google's European headquarters in Dublin and wrote to complain, Google relented, reviewed the group's website, found its content to be advocating a political position, and restored the AdWord advertisement. In June 2012, Google rejected the
Australian Sex Party The Australian Sex Party was an Australian political party founded in 2009 in response to concerns over the purported increasing influence of religion in Australian politics. The party was born out of an adult-industry lobby group, the Eros Asso ...
's ads for
AdWords Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
and sponsored search results for the July 12 by-election for the state seat of Melbourne, saying the Party breached its rules which prevent solicitation of donations by a website that did not display tax-exempt status. Although the Sex Party amended its website to display tax deductibility information, Google continued to ban the ads. The ads were reinstated on election eve after it was reported in the media that the Sex Party was considering suing Google. On September 13, 2012, the Party lodged formal complaints against Google with the
US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
and the Australian competition watchdog, accusing Google of "unlawful interference in the conduct of a state election in
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...
with corrupt intent" in violation of the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) (, ''et seq.'') is a United States federal law that prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials to benefit their business interests. The FCPA is applicable world ...
.


YouTube

YouTube is a
video sharing An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...
website acquired by Google in 2006. YouTube's Terms of Service prohibits the posting of videos which violate
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
s or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or
hate speech Hate speech is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thoug ...
. User-posted videos that violate such terms may be removed and replaced with a message stating: "This video is no longer available because its content violated YouTube's Terms of Service". YouTube has been criticized by national governments for failing to police content. For example, videos have been critically accused for being "left up", among other videos featuring unwarranted violence or strong ill-intention against people who probably didn't want this to be published. In 2006, Thailand blocked access to YouTube for users with Thai IP addresses. Thai authorities identified 20 offensive videos and demanded that YouTube remove them before it would unblock any YouTube content. In 2007 a Turkish judge ordered access to YouTube blocked because of content that insulted
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 Surname Law (Turkey), until 1934 ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish Mareşal (Turkey), field marshal, Turkish National Movement, re ...
, which is a crime under Turkish law. On February 22, 2008,
Pakistan Telecommunications Authority The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ( ur, ) is the telecommunication regulator of Pakistan, responsible for the establishment, operation and maintenance of telecommunication systems and the provision of telecommunication services in ...
(PTA) attempted to block regional access to YouTube following a government order. The attempt inadvertently caused a worldwide YouTube blackout that took 2 hours to correct. Four days later, PTA lifted the ban after YouTube removed controversial religious comments made by a Dutch Member of Parliament concerning Islam. YouTube has also been criticized by its users for attempting to censor content. In November 2007, the account of
Wael Abbas Wael Abbas Bilal ( arz, وائل عباس, ) (born 14 November 1974 in Egypt) is an internationally renowned Egyptian journalist, blogger, and human rights activist, who blogs at Misr Digital (Egyptian Awareness). He reported an incident of mob ha ...
, a well known Egyptian activist who posted videos of police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations, was blocked for three days."YouTube stops account of Egypt anti-torture activist"
, Cynthia Johnston, Reuters, November 27, 2007
In February 2008, a video produced by the
American Life League American Life League, Inc. (ALL) is an American Catholic activist organization which opposes abortion, all forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. Its current president is co-founder Judie Brown and its headquarters i ...
that accused a
Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
television commercial of promoting
recreational sex Casual sex is sexual activity that takes place outside a romantic relationship and implies an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sexual activity while casually dating, one-night ...
was removed, then reinstated two days later. In October, a video by political speaker
Pat Condell Patrick Condell (born 23 November 1949) is a British writer, polemicist, and former stand-up comedian. In his early career, he wrote and performed in alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in London, winning the Time Out Comedy Awar ...
criticizing the British government for officially sanctioning sharia law courts in Britain was removed, then reinstated two days later. YouTube also pulled a video of columnist
Michelle Malkin Michelle Malkin (; Maglalang; born October 20, 1970) is an American conservative political commentator. She was a Fox News contributor and in May 2020 joined Newsmax TV. Malkin has written seven books and founded the conservative websites Tw ...
showing violence by Muslim extremists. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, commented that while, in his opinion, Michelle Malkin disseminates bigotry in her blog, "that does not mean that this particular video is bigoted; it's not. But because it's by Malkin, it's a target." In 2019, YouTube settled for $170 million the FTC and the New York Attorney General for alleged violations of the US
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at (). The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. juri ...
(COPPA), which prohibits internet companies from collecting data from kids under 13. YouTube's enactment of the settlement started in January 2020; this required creators to indicate whether their videos were intended for children, with fines of up to $42,530 per violation of COPPA. Some features that depend on user data are disabled on videos designated for children, including comments and channel branding watermarks; the 'donate' button; cards and end screens; live chat and live chat donations; notifications; and 'save to playlist' or 'watch later' features. Such channels will also become " ungooglable". In October 2021, YouTube, together with Snapchat and TikTok, participated in a Senate hearing on protecting children online. The session was prompted by Facebook whistle blower
Frances Haugen Frances Haugen (born 1983 or 1984) is an American data engineer and scientist, product manager, and whistleblower. She disclosed tens of thousands of Facebook's internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and ''The Wall Street Jo ...
's hearing prior. In the hearing, the social media companies tried to distance themselves from Facebook, to which Senate Commerce consumer protection Chair
Richard Blumenthal Richard Blumenthal (; born February 13, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician who is the senior United States senator from Connecticut, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he is one of the wealthiest members of ...
responded saying “Being different from Facebook is not a defense", "That bar is in the gutter."


Ungoogleable

In 2013, Google successfully prevented the
Swedish Language Council The Language Council of Sweden ( sv, Språkrådet) is the primary regulatory body for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is a department of the Swedish government's Institute for Language and Folklore ( sv, Insti ...
from including the
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
version of the word "''ungoogleable''" ("'") in its list of new words. Google objected to its definition (which referred to web searches in general without mentioning Google specifically) and the council was forced to remove it to avoid legal confrontation with Google. They also accused Google of "trying to control the Swedish language".


Other types of censorship

In August 2022, Google closed a person's account on sharing pictures of his son's sensitive areas with the doctor, as it was flagged as child abuse by Google's automated systems.


Labor practices

Several former Google employees have spoken out about working conditions, practices, and ethics at the company. As the company became more concerned about leaks to the press in 2019, it scaled employee all-hands meetings from weekly to monthly, limiting question topics to business and product strategy. Google CEO
Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (), is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Born in Madurai, India, Pichai earned hi ...
told employees in late 2019 that the company is "genuinely struggling with some issues" including transparency and employee trust. On 2 December 2020, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Google for 'terminations and intimidation in order to quell workplace activism'. The complaint was filed after a year-long investigation by a terminated employee. He filed a petition in 2019, after that many Google employees carried out internal protests against Google's work with US Customs and Border Protection.


Diversity politics

A widely circulated internal memo, written by senior engineer James Damore, ''
Google's Ideological Echo Chamber "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", commonly referred to as the Google memo, is an internal memo, dated July 2017, by US-based Google engineer James Damore () about Google's culture and diversity policies. The memo and Google's subsequent di ...
'', sharply criticized Google's political biases and employee policies. Google said the memo was "advancing harmful gender stereotypes" and fired Damore. David Brooks demanded the resignation of its CEO
Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (), is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Born in Madurai, India, Pichai earned hi ...
for mishandling the case. Ads criticizing Pichai and Google for the firing were put up shortly after at various Google locations. Some have called to boycott Google and its services, with a hashtag #boycottGoogle coming up on Twitter. A rally against Google alleged partisanship was planned as "March on Google", but later cancelled due to threats and the Charlottesville mayhem. Arne Wilberg, an ex-YouTube recruiter, claimed that he was fired in November 2017 when he complained about Google's new practices in not hiring white and Asian men to YouTube in favor of women and minority applicants. According to the lawsuit, an internal policy document stated that for three months in 2017, YouTube recruiters should only hire diverse candidates. In June 2021, Google removed its global lead for diversity strategy and research after being made aware of an
antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
comment he made in 2007.


Harassment and discrimination

In February 2016,
Amit Singhal Amitabh Kumar "Amit" Singhal (born September 1968) is a former senior vice president at Google Inc. having been a Google Fellow and the head of Google's Search team for 15 years.Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
engaged in a worldwide
walkout In labor disputes, a walkout is a labor strike, the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace and withholding labor as an act of protest. A walkout can also mean the act of leaving a place of work, school, a meeting, a company, or an ...
to protest the way in which the company has handled sexual harassment, and other grievances. In July 2019, Google settled a long-running age discrimination lawsuit brought by 227 over-40 employees and job seekers. Although Google denied it had age discrimination, it agreed to a settlement of $11 million for the plaintiffs, to train its employees not to have age-based bias, and to have its recruiting department focus on age diversity among its engineering employees. In January 2020, the San Francisco Pride organization voted to ban Google and YouTube from their annual
Pride parade A pride parade (also known as pride march, pride event, or pride festival) is an outdoor event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, LGBT rights by country o ...
due to hate speech on their platforms and retaliation against LBGTQ activists. In 2020, HR executive Eileen Naughton joined long-time Chief Legal Counsel David Drummond in stepping down from their positions over a lawsuit naming them and the company founders in accusations of mishandling years of sexual harassment complaints. In February 2020, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) opened an investigation into former Google employee Chelsey Glasson's allegations of pregnancy discrimination. Glasson filed a state civil lawsuit while the EEOC investigated, with a trial date set for January 2022. She settled with the company in February 2022. She revealed that Google's legal team obtained therapy notes from her sessions through the company's
Employee assistance program An employee assistance program (EAP) is an employee benefit program that assists employees with personal problems and/or work-related problems that may impact their job performance, health, mental and emotional well-being. EAPs generally offer ...
counseling provider, and that the provider dropped her as a client when she filed the lawsuit, which sparked Senator
Karen Keiser Karen Lynne Keiser (born September 29, 1947) is an American journalist and politician of the Democratic Party. She represents the 33rd Legislative District in the Washington State Senate, which contains parts of Burien, Normandy Park, SeaTac, ...
to introduce a bill in
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
in January 2022 to prohibit
private sector The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government. Employment The ...
providers from disclosing private information typically covered under
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...
laws. Also in January 2022, she criticized the company's use of
non-disclosure agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish ...
s (NDAs) in testimony to the
Washington House of Representatives The Washington House of Representatives is the lower house of the Washington State Legislature, and along with the Washington State Senate makes up the legislature of the U.S. state of Washington. It is composed of 98 Representatives from 49 ...
for whistleblower protection legislature, which she said intimidated her from speaking out about the discrimination she allegedly witnessed and experienced. In response, Google told ''Protocol'' that their confidentiality agreements do not prevent current and former workers from disclosing facts pertaining to harassment or discrimination. Both laws were passed into legislature in March 2022.


Allegations of union busting

The official settlement agreement that Google signed with the NLRB in 2019 includes this notice to be sent to employees: Google has been criticized for hiring IRI Consultants, a firm that advertises its accomplishments in helping organizations prevent successful union organizing. Google Zurich attempted to cancel employee-organized meetings about labor rights in June and October 2019. Some Google employees and contractors are already unionized, including security guards, some service workers, and analysts and trainers for Google Shopping in Pittsburgh employed by contractor HCL. In 2021 court documents revealed that between 2018 and 2020 Google ran an anti-union campaign called Project Vivian to "convince mployeesthat unions suck”. As of December 2019, the
National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Natio ...
is investigating whether several firings were in retaliation for labor organizing-related activities. One of the fired employees was tasked with informing her colleagues about Google policy changes, and created a message informing them that they, "have the right to participate in protected concerted activities," when they visited the IRI Consultants site.


Xinjiang region

In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands, including Google, of being connected to forced Uyghur labor in
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
.


Other


Non-alignment with US defense

Former
Deputy Defense Secretary The deputy secretary of defense (acronym: DepSecDef) is a statutory office () and the second-highest-ranking official in the Department of Defense of the United States of America. The deputy secretary is the principal civilian deputy to the se ...
Robert O. Work in 2018 criticized Google and its employees have stepped into a ''
Moral Hazard In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk. For example, when a corporation is insured, it may take on higher risk ...
'' for themselves as not continuing Pentagon's
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
project, Project Maven, while helping China's AI technology that "could be used against the United States in a conflict." He described Google as hypocritical, given it has opened an AI center in China and "Anything that's going on in the AI center in China is going to the Chinese government and then will ultimately end up in the hands of the Chinese military." Work said "I didn't see any Google employee saying, 'Hmm, maybe we shouldn't do that.'" Google's dealings with China is decrying as unpatriotic.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) is the presiding officer of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The chairman is the highest-ranking and most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces Chairman: app ...
General
Joseph Dunford Joseph Francis Dunford Jr. (born December 23, 1955) is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general, who served as the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2015, until September 30, 2019. He was the 36th command ...
also criticizes
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
as "it's inexplicable" that it continue investing in China, "who uses censorship technology to restrain freedoms and crackdown on people there and has long history of
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
and
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
theft which hurts U.S. companies," while simultaneously not renewing further research and development collaborations with
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
. He said, "I'm not sure that people at Google will enjoy a world order that is informed by the norms and standards of Russia or China." He urges Google to work directly with the U.S. government instead of making controversial inroads into China. Senator
Mark Warner Mark Robert Warner (born December 15, 1954) is an American businessman and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Virginia, a seat he has held since 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Warner served as the 69th governo ...
(D-VA) criticized Dragonfly evidences China's success at "recruit ngU.S. companies to their information control efforts" while China exports cyber and censorship infrastructure to countries like Venezuela, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.


Energy consumption

Google has been criticized for the high amount of energy used to maintain its servers, but was praised by
Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...
for the use of renewable sources of energy to run them. Google has pledged to spend millions of dollars to investigate cheap, clean,
renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
, and has installed
solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...
s on the roofs at its Mountain View facilities. In 2010, Google also invested $39 million in wind power.


Google bus protests

In late 2013, activists in the San Francisco Bay Area began protesting the use of shuttle buses by Google and other tech companies, viewing them as symbols of
gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...
and
displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics *Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...
in a city where the rapid growth of the tech sector has driven up housing prices.


Google Video

On August 15, 2007 Google discontinued its Download-to-own/Download-to-rent (DTO/DTR) program. Some videos previously purchased for ownership under that program were no longer viewable when the embedded
Digital Rights Management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
(DRM) licenses were revoked. Google gave refunds for the full amount spent on videos using "gift certificates" (or "bonuses") to their customers' "Google Checkout Account". After a public uproar, Google issued full refunds to the credit cards of the Google Video users without revoking the gift certificates.


Search within search

For some search results, Google provides a secondary search box that can be used to search within a website identified from the first search. It sparked controversy among some online publishers and retailers. When performing a second search within a specific website, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up together with the results from the website being searched. This has the potential to draw users away from the website they were originally searching. "While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies." In order to combat this controversy, Google has offered to turn off this feature for companies who request to have it removed. According to software engineer Ben Lee and Product Manager Jack Menzel, the idea for search within search originated from the way users were searching. It appeared that users were often not finding exactly what they needed while trying to explore within a company site. "Teleporting" on the web, where users need only type part of the name of a website into Google (no need to remember the entire URL) in order to find the correct site, is what helps Google users complete their search. Google took this concept a step further and instead of just "teleporting", users could type in keywords to search within the website of their choice.


Naming of Go programming language

Google is criticized for naming their programming language " Go" while there is already an existing programming language called " Go!".


Potential security threats

Google's Street View has been criticized for providing information that could potentially be useful to terrorists. In the United Kingdom during March 2010, Liberal Democrats MP
Paul Keetch Paul Stuart Keetch (21 May 1961 – 24 May 2017) was a Liberal Democrat politician and lobbyist who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hereford from 1997 to 2010. Early life He went to Hereford High School for Boys (now Aylestone Busines ...
and unnamed military officers criticized Google for including pictures of the entrance to the British Army
Special Air Service The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...
(SAS) base, stating that terrorists might use the information to plan attacks. Google responded that it "only takes images from public roads and this is no different to what anyone could see traveling down the road themselves, therefore there is no appreciable security risk." Military sources stated that "It is highly irresponsible for military bases, especially special forces, to be pictured on the internet. ..The question is, why risk a very serious security breach for the sake of having a picture on a website?" Google was subsequently forced to remove images of the SAS base and other military, security and intelligence installations, admitting that its trained drivers had failed to not take photographs in areas banned under the Official Secrets Act. In 2008, Google complied with requests from
The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
to remove Street View images of the entrances to military bases.


Politics


Scope of influence

Despite being one of the world's largest and most influential companies, unlike many other technology companies, Google does not disclose its political spending. In August 2010, New York City Public Advocate
Bill de Blasio Bill de Blasio (; born Warren Wilhelm Jr., May 8, 1961; later Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm) is an American politician who served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New Yor ...
launched a national campaign urging the corporation to disclose all of its political spending. In the 2010s, Google spent about $150 million on lobbying, largely related to privacy protections and regulation of monopolies. Google sponsors several non-profit lobbying groups, such as the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) in the UK. Google has sponsored meetings of the conservative
Competitive Enterprise Institute The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit libertarian think tank founded by the political writer Fred L. Smith Jr. on March 9, 1984, in Washington, D.C., to advance principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individu ...
who have had speakers including libertarian Republican and
Tea Party A tea party is a social gathering event held in the afternoon. For centuries, many societies have cherished drinking tea with a company at noon. Tea parties are considered for formal business meetings, social celebrations or just as an afternoon ...
member, and Senator for Kentucky,
Rand Paul Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American physician and politician serving as the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he is a son of former three-time presidential candidate and 12 ...
.
Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Fac ...
stated that Google had too much influence on the
Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
, claiming that the company "had more power under Obama than
Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
had under Bush 43". There are many
revolving door A revolving door typically consists of three or four doors that hang on a central shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure. Revolving doors are energy efficient as they, acting as an airlock, prevent drafts, thus de ...
examples between Google and the U.S. government. This includes: 53 revolving door moves between Google and the White House; 22 former White House officials who left the administration to work for Google and 31 Google executives who joined the White House; 45 ''Obama for America'' campaign staffers leaving for Google or Google controlled companies; 38 revolving door moves between Google and government positions involving national security, intelligence or the Department of Defense; 23 revolving door moves between Google and the State Department; and 18 Pentagon officials moving to Google. Additionally, studies found that employees of Alphabet donated largely to support the election of candidates from the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
.


Climate change

In 2013, Google joined the
American Legislative Exchange Council The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United State ...
(ALEC). In September 2014, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced the company would leave ALEC for lying about climate change and "hurting our children". In 2018, Google started an oil, gas, and energy division, hiring Darryl Willis, a 25-year BP executive who ''The Wall Street Journal'' said was intended "to court the oil and gas industry." Google Cloud signed an agreement with the French oil company
Total S.A. TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...
, "to jointly develop artificial intelligence solutions for subsurface data analysis in oil and gas exploration and production." A partnership with Houston oil investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. was described by the ''Houston Chronicle'' as giving Google "a more visible presence in Houston as one of its oldest industries works to cut costs in the wake of the oil bust and remain competitive as electric vehicles and renewable power sources gain market share." Other agreements were made with oilfield services companies
Baker Hughes Baker Hughes Company, organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston, is one of the world's largest oil field services companies. The company provides products and services for oil well drilling, formation evaluation, completion, productio ...
and
Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling compa ...
, and
Anadarko Petroleum Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It was organized in Delaware and headquartered in two skyscrapers in The Woodlands, Texas: the Allison Tower and the Hackett Tower, both named after former CEOs of ...
, to use "artificial intelligence to analyse large volumes of seismic and operational data to find oil, maximise output and increase efficiency," and negotiations were started with petroleum giant
Saudi Aramco Saudi Aramco ( ar, أرامكو السعودية '), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company) or simply Aramco, is a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran. , it is one of ...
. In 2019, Google was criticised for sponsoring a conference that included a session promoting
climate change denial Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...
. LibertyCon speaker Caleb Rossiter belongs to the Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In November 2019, over 1,000 Google employees demanded that the company commit to zero emissions by 2030 and cancel contracts with fossil fuel companies.


= ''AGreenerGoogle.com''

= In April 2020,
Extinction Rebellion Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk o ...
launched ''"agreenergoogle.com",'' a spoof website containing a fake announcement by Google CEO
Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (), is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Born in Madurai, India, Pichai earned hi ...
claiming that "they would stop funding of organizations that deny or work to block action on climate change, effective immediately".


YouTube user comments

Most YouTube videos allow users to leave comments, and these have attracted attention for the negative aspects of both their form and content. In 2006, ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' praised
Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
for enabling "community and collaboration on a scale never seen before", and added that YouTube "harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred". ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' in 2009 described users' comments on YouTube as: In September 2008, ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...
'' commented that YouTube was "notorious" for "some of the most confrontational and ill-formed comment exchanges on the internet", and reported on YouTube Comment Snob, "a new piece of software that blocks rude and illiterate posts". ''
The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'' noted in April 2012 that finding comments on YouTube that appear "offensive, stupid and crass" to the "vast majority" of the people is hardly difficult. On November 6, 2013, Google implemented a new comment system that requires all YouTube users to use a
Google+ Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
account to comment on videos, thereby making the comment system Google+-orientated. The corporation stated that the change is necessary to personalize comment sections for viewers, eliciting an overwhelmingly negative public response—YouTube co-founder
Jawed Karim Jawed Karim (বাংলাঃ জাওয়াদ করিম) (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to upl ...
also expressed disdain by writing on his channel: "why the fuck do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?". The official YouTube announcement received over 62,000 "thumbs down" votes and only just over 4,000 "thumbs up" votes, while an online petition demanding Google+'s removal gained more than 230,000 signatures in just over two months. Writing in the ''Newsday'' blog Silicon Island, Chase Melvin noted: "Google+ is nowhere near as popular a social media network as Facebook, but it's essentially being forced upon millions of YouTube users who don't want to lose their ability to comment on videos."
Alternate link
.
In the same article Melvin adds: On July 27, 2015, Google announced that Google+ would no longer be required for using various services, including YouTube. Users are now able to delete their Google+ profile without losing features or content.


Zero-rating

Google has supported
net neutrality Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of co ...
in the US, while opposing it in India by supporting
zero-rating Zero-rating is the practice of providing Internet access without financial cost under certain conditions, such as by permitting access to only certain websites or by subsidizing the service with advertising or by exempting certain websites from ...
.


2016 April Fools' joke

On April 1, 2016, the Mic Drop April Fools' joke in Gmail caused damage for users who accidentally clicked the button Google installed on that occasion.


Think Tank meddling

''The New York Times'' reported that Google has pressured the New America think tank which is supported by it, to remove a statement supporting the EU antitrust fine against Google. After
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
voiced his displeasure from the statement, the whole research group involved were sidelined in the New America think tank, which gets funding from Google. Consequently, the Open Markets research group went to open their own think tank, which will not get any funding from Google.


ANS patent controversy

Wide attention in Polish media has resulted from Google's attempt to patent video compression application of ANS coding, which is now widely used in products of e.g. Apple, Facebook and Google. Its author has helped Google in this adaptation for 3 years through public forum, but was not included in the patent application. He was supported in fighting this patent by his employer:
Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
.


Spatial data and the city

Google's huge share of spatial information services, including Google Maps and the Google Places API, has been criticised by activists and academics in terms of the cartographic power it affords Google to map and represent the world's cities. In addition, given Google and Alphabet Inc.'s increasing involvement with urban planning, particularly through subsidiaries like
Sidewalk Labs Sidewalk Labs is an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. ...
, this has resulted in criticism that Google is exerting an increasing power over urban areas that may not be beneficial to democracy in the long term. This criticism is also related to wider concerns around democracy and
Smart Cities A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in retur ...
that has been directed to a number of other large corporations.


Breach of court order

On 10 December 2018, a New Zealand court ordered that the name of a man accused of murdering British traveller
Grace Millane Grace Emmie Rose Millane (2 December 1996 – 2 December 2018) was a British tourist whose disappearance in Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018 sparked international attention. A 26-year-old man, Jesse Shane Kempson was charged with her mur ...
be withheld from the public (a
gag order A gag order (also known as a gagging order or suppression order) is an order, typically a legal order by a court or government, restricting information or comment from being made public or passed onto any unauthorized third party. The phrase may ...
). The next morning, Google named the man in an email it sent people who had subscribed to "what's trending in New Zealand". Lawyers warned that this could compromise the trial, and Justice Minister Andrew Little said that Google was in contempt of court. Google said that it had been unaware of the court order, and that the email had been created by algorithms.


Electronic pop-up books patent

In 2016, Google filed a patent application for interactive pop-up books with electronics. Jie Qi noticed that the patent resembled work she had shared when she visited
Google ATAP Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) is a skunkworks team and in-house technology incubator, created by former DARPA director Regina Dugan. ATAP is similar to X, but works on projects, granting project leaders time—previou ...
in 2014 as a PhD student at the
MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
; two of the Google employees listed on the application as inventors had also interviewed her during the same visit. After Qi submitted
prior art Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria f ...
to the
USPTO The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
, the application was abandoned.


Project Nightingale

Project Nightingale Project Nightingale is a data storage and processing project by Google Cloud and Ascension, a Catholic health care system comprising a chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors' offices and other related facilities, in 21 states, with tens of millions of ...
is a health care
data sharing Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...
project financed by
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
and Ascension, a Catholic health care system, the second largest in the United States. Ascension owns comprehensive health care information on millions of former and current patients who are part of its system. Google and Ascension have been processing this data, in secret, since sometime in 2018, without the knowledge and consent of patients and doctors. The work they are doing appears to comply with federal health care law which includes "robust protections for patient data." However, concerns have been voiced whether the transfer really is
HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...
compliant. The project is Google's attempt to gain a large scale foot hold into the healthcare industry.


YouTube: ads forced on all videos, without revenue-share

In 2020, Google-owned
YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
changed its policy so that it could include ads on all videos, regardless of whether the content-creator wanted them or not. Those who were not part of Google's Partner Program would receive no revenue for this. To join the program, creators must have more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewed content in the last 12 months.


Abuse of attorney-client privilege

In March 2022, the Department of Justice and 14 state attorneys general accused Google of misusing
attorney–client privilege Attorney–client privilege or lawyer–client privilege is the name given to the common law concept of legal professional privilege in the United States. Attorney–client privilege is " client's right to refuse to disclose and to prevent any ...
to hide emails from subpoenas using an employee policy called 'Communicate with Care,' which instructs employees to
carbon copy Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself (not to be confused with the carbon print family of photographic reproduc ...
(CC) Google's attorneys on emails and flag them as exempt from disclosure. Employees are directed to add a general request for the attorney's advice even when no legal advice is needed or sought. Often Google's lawyers will not respond to such requests, which the Justice Department claimed shows they understand and are participating in the evasion.


See also

* DeGoogle *
Don't be evil "Don't be evil" is a phrase that was used in Google's corporate code of conduct, which it also formerly preceded as a motto. Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the r ...
*
Google litigation Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in t ...
* High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation *
Googlization ''Googlization'' is a neologism that describes the expansion of Google's search technologies and aesthetics into more markets, web applications, and contexts, including traditional institutions such as the library (see Google Books Library Proje ...
*
Ireland as a tax haven Ireland has been labelled as a tax haven or corporate tax haven in multiple financial reports, an allegation which the state has rejected in response. Ireland is on all academic " tax haven lists", including the , and tax NGOs. Ireland does no ...
*
Filter bubble A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolationTechnopediaDefinition – What does Filter Bubble mean?, Retrieved October 10, 2017, "....A filter bubble is the intellectual isolation, that can occur when websites make us ...
*
History of Google Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most used web-based search engine. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search al ...
* '' The Creepy Line'' * '' Who Owns the Future?'' *
Surveillance capitalism Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, though the two can reinforce each o ...
* Criticisms of software and websites *
Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. The ...


References


External links


"Google's Email Service 'Gmail' Sacrifices Privacy for Extra Storage Space"
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, April 2, 2004
"Privacy Group Flunks Google"
Lisa Vaas, '' eWeek.com'', June 12, 2007
"Who's afraid of Google?"
''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'', August 30, 2007
Google Watch
(Archived 2011) {{Censorship and websites
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
Articles containing video clips