Google LLC

Google LLC Google logo since 2015.
Corporate Information
Name	Google LLC
Former name	Google Inc. (1998-2017)
Founded	1998-08-04 (Menlo Park, California, U.S.A.)
Founders	Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin Lawrence Edward "Larry" Page
Type	Subsidiary  (LLC)
EIN (Tax ID)
Location	United States
Headquarters	Mountain View, California , U.S.A.
Areas served	Global
Industry	Advertising Artificial intelligence Cloud computing Computer software Computer hardware Internet
CEO	Sundar Pichai (Pichai Sundararajan; CEO of Google and Alphabet)
Executives	Ruth Porat  (CFO)
Controversies	abuse of its monopoly antitrust activity censorship privacy concerns search neutrality tax avoidance
Products	Full list Summary: Show Web-based products: Search tools Advertising services Communication and publishing tools Map-related products Statistical tools Business-oriented products Developer tools: Security tools Operating systems Desktop applications Mobile applications Hardware: Product families Models Services
Revenue	2020: $US182,527,000,000
Profit	2020: $US97,795,000,000
Assets	2020: $US319,616,000,000
Employees	2021: 139,995
Parent company	Alphabet Inc.
Website	Google.com

Background

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine,   cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google is considered one of the Big Tech companies companies in the American information technology industry, along with Amazon,   Facebook,   Apple, and Microsoft.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Lawrence Edward "Larry" Page and Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14% of its publicly-listed shares and control 56% of the stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's Internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai [Pichai Sundararajan] was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.

In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, mainly composed of Google employees.

The company's rapid growth since incorporation has included products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine,  (Google Search).

Google offers services designed for:

Google leads the development of the;

Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Google Nexus devices, and it released multiple hardware products in 2016, including the Google Pixel line of smartphones, Google Home smart speaker, Google Wifi mesh wireless router.

Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier (Google Fiber and Google Fi).

Google.com is the most visited website worldwide. Several other Google-owned websites also are on the list of most popular websites, including YouTube and Blogger. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes, and fourth by Interbrand. Google has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns,   tax avoidance,   censorship,   search neutrality,   antitrust, and abuse of its monopoly position.

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Advertising

Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$109,652 million in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob,   AdSense (such as AdSense for Content,  AdSense for Search, etc.), and DoubleClick AdExchange (AdX).

In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology its acquisition of DoubleClick, to project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user history.

In 2007, Google launched AdSense for Mobile, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility.

See also, re: CNIL: [CNIL.fr, 2022-01-06] Cookies: the CNIL fines GOOGLE a total of 150 million euros and FACEBOOK 60 million euros for non-compliance with French legislation.

Financials: Alphabet Inc. [GOOGL]

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) income statement, assets (millions of $US, at Dec. 31).
Sources:   • Financials   • Assets
Breakdown	TTM	2020	2019	2018	2017
Total Revenue	$220,265	$182,527	161,857	$136,819	$110,855
- Cost of Revenue	$97,527	$84,732	$71,896	$59,549	$45,583
= Gross Profit	$122,738	$97,795	$89,961	$77,270	$65,272
Operating Expense	$60,076	$56,571	$54,033	$45,878	$36,390
Operating Income	$62,662	$41,224	$35,928	$31,392	$28,882
Total Expenses	$157,603	$141,303	$125,929	$105,427	$81,973
Total Assets	n.a.	$319,616	$275,909	$232,792	$197,295

Firing of Timnit Gebru

On the evening of Wednesday 2020-12-02, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google's ethical AI team, announced via Twitter that the company had forced her out.

Timnit Gebru, a widely respected leader in artificial intelligence (AI) ethics research, is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. She also cofounded the Black in AI affinity group, and champions diversity in the tech industry. The team she helped build at Google is one of the most diverse in AI and includes many leading experts in their own right. Peers in the field envied it for producing critical work that often challenged mainstream AI practices.

A series of tweets,   leaked emails, and media articles showed that Timnit Gebru's exit was the culmination of a conflict over another paper she coauthored. Jeff Dean, the head of Google AI, told colleagues in an internal email (which he has since put online) that the paper "didn't meet our bar for publication" and that Gebru had said she would resign unless Google met a number of conditions, which it was unwilling to meet. Gebru tweeted that she had asked to negotiate "a last date" for her employment after she got back from vacation. She was cut off from her corporate email account before her return.

Online, many other leaders in the field of AI ethics are arguing that the company pushed her out because of the inconvenient truths that she was uncovering about a core line of its research - and perhaps its bottom line. More than 1,400 Google staff members and 1,900 other supporters have also signed a letter of protest.

Many details of the exact sequence of events that led up to Timnit Gebru's departure are not yet clear; both she and Google have declined to comment beyond their posts on social media. But MIT Technology Review obtained a copy of the research paper from one of the coauthors, Emily M. Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington. Though Bender asked us not to publish the paper itself because the authors didn't want such an early draft circulating online, it gives some insight into the questions Gebru and her colleagues were raising about AI that might be causing Google concern.

"On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" lays out the risks of large language models - AIs trained on staggering amounts of text data. These have grown increasingly popular - and increasingly large - in the last three years. They are now extraordinarily good, under the right conditions, at producing what looks like convincing, meaningful new text - and sometimes at estimating meaning from language. But, says the introduction to the paper, "we ask whether enough thought has been put into the potential risks associated with developing them and strategies to mitigate these risks."

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Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation

Google-Apple Antitrust Litigation

California Crane School, Inc. filed a class action antitrust case [3:21-cv-10001, C.C.S.I. v Google LLC  |  local copy] on 2021-12-27 against Google and Apple Inc. and the Chief Executive Officers of both companies, alleging violations of the United States antitrust law.

The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google. The complaint claims that the means used to effectuate the non-compete agreement included the following items.

1. Google would share it's search profits with Apple.

2. Apple would give preferential treatment to Google for all Apple devices.

3. Regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies.

4. Annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business.

5. Suppression of the competition of smaller competitors and foreclosing competitors from the search market.

6. Acquiring actual and potential competitors.

The complaint alleges that advertising rates are higher than rates would be in a competitive system. The complaint seeks the disgorgement ("the act of giving up something (such as profits illegally obtained) on demand or by legal compulsion") of the billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple. The complaint asks for an injunction prohibiting the non-compete agreement between Google and Apple; the profit-sharing agreement; the preferential treatment for Google on Apple devices; and the payment of billions of dollars by Google to Apple.

The complaint also calls for the breakup of Google into separate and independent companies and the breakup of Apple into separate and independent companies in accordance with the precedent of the breakup of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey into Exxon  [now: ExxonMobil], Mobile,   Conoco,   Amoco,   (The Standard Oil Company (Ohio)),   Chevron, and others [Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States].

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs include the following.

• Joseph M. Alioto  [local copy] and Tatiana V. Wallace of Alioto Law Firm;

• Lawrence G. Papale  [local copy] of Law Offices of Lawrence G. Papale;

• Robert J. Bonsignore  [local copy] of Bonsignore Trial Lawyers PLLC;

• Christopher A. Nedeau  [local copy] of Nedeau Law, P.C.  [local copy];

• Josephine L. Alioto of The Veen Firm, P.C.;

• Jeffery K. Perkins of Law Office of Jeffery K. Perkins;

• Theresa Driscoll Moore  [local copy  |  see also] of Law Offices of Theresa D. Moore, P.C.; and,

• Lingel Hart Winters of Law Offices of Lingel H. Winters, P.C..

Joseph M. Alioto of Alioto Law Firm said "These powerful companies abused their size by unlawfully foreclosing and monopolizing major markets which in an otherwise free enterprise system would have created jobs, lowered prices, increased production, added new competitors, encouraged innovations, and increased the quality of services in the digital age."

The alleged 2017 deal between Google and Facebook to kill header bidding - a way for multiple ad exchanges to compete fairly in automated ad auctions - was negotiated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and endorsed by both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (now with Meta) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an updated complaint filed in the Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google. Texas, 14 other US states, and the Commonwealths of Kentucky and Puerto Rico accused Google of unlawfully monopolizing the online ad market and rigging ad auctions in a 2020-12, lawsuit. The plaintiffs subsequently filed an amendment complaint in October, 2021, that includes details previously redacted. On Friday [2022-01-14], Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint  [local copy] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages.

The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail. Presently, there are three other US government-backed unfair competition claims against Google ongoing: a federal antitrust lawsuit from the US Justice Department, a challenge from Colorado and 38 other State Attorneys General (filed around the same time as the Texas-led complaint), as well as a anti-competition claim focused on   Android and the Google Play filed last 2021-07.

The third amendment complaint delves into more detail about how Google allegedly worked "to kill header bidding," which Google is said to have viewed as an existential threat to its position as an ad market gatekeeper. It elaborates on the negotiation between Google and Facebook to convince Facebook to stop supporting header bidding in exchange for favorable treatment. The deal, referred to as "Jedi Blue" internally and eventually as "Open Bidding" when discussed publicly, allegedly allowed Facebook to win ad auctions even when outbid by competitors. The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook's Chief Operating Officer was explicit that 'his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO . When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to the CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO and his other executives before making a decision."

The resulting 2018 Google-Facebook "Jedi Blue" deal was, it's claimed, ultimately signed by Philipp Schindler, SVP and head of Google advertising sales and operations and Facebook's COO - known to the world as Sheryl Sandberg, a member of Facebook's board of directors who formerly served as Google VP of Facebook's Global Online Sales and Operations. "Google CEO Sundar Pichai also personally signed off on the terms of the deal," the court filing says.

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Cookies

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CNIL: Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés

The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL; English: National Commission on Informatics and Liberty) is an independent French administrative regulatory body whose mission is to ensure that data privacy law is applied to the collection, storage, and use of personal data. Its existence was established by the French loi n° 78-17 on Information Technology, Data Files and Civil Liberty of 1978-01-06, and it is the national data protection authority for France. From 2011-09 to 2019-02, the CNIL has been chaired by Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin. It's now chaired by Marie-Laure Denis.

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The restricted committee, the body of the CNIL responsible for issuing sanctions, has noted, following investigations, that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies  [HTTP cookies]. However, they do not provide an equivalent solution (button or other) enabling the internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies. Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, against a single one to accept them.

The restricted committee considered that this process affects the freedom of consent: since, on the internet, the user expects to be able to quickly consult a website, the fact that they cannot refuse the cookies as easily as they can accept them influences their choice in favor of consent. This constitutes an infringement of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act.

As a result of this infringement, the CNIL's restricted committee issued:

• a fine of 150 million euros against GOOGLE (90 million euros for GOOGLE LLC and 60 million euros for GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED);
• a fine of 60 million euros against the company Facebook IRELAND LIMITED.

In addition to the fines, the restricted committee ordered the companies to provide internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent, within three months [ca. 2022-04]. If they fail to do so, the companies will have to pay a penalty of 100,000 euros per day of delay.

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Google - Safety Issues

Additional Reading

Alphabet Inc.'s Google pays billions of dollars each year to Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., and other telecom giants to illegally maintain its spot as the No. 1 search engine, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) told a federal judge Thursday (2022-09-08). DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer didn't disclose how much Google spends to be the default search engine on most browsers and all U.S. mobile phones, but described the payments as "enormous numbers." "Google invests billions of dollars in defaults, knowing people won't change them," Kenneth Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta during a hearing in Washington, D.C. that marked the first major face-off in the case and drew top DOJ antitrust officials and Nebraska's attorney general among the spectators. "They are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot."

Google's contracts form the basis of the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ)'s landmark antitrust lawsuit, which alleges Google has sought to maintain its online search monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. State attorneys general are pursuing a parallel antitrust suit against the search giant (Google), also pending before judge Amit Mehta. A trial isn't expected to start formally until next year (2023) ...

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Google is reportedly "aggressively" working on winning a contract with the Pentagon, even though some of its previous United States Department of Defense (DoD) work sparked major backlash from employees, according to The New York Times. According to the report, Google's Cloud division has reassigned engineers to work on a proposal for Google to contribute to the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program [local copy], which the DoD describes as an attempt to "achieve dominance in both traditional and non-traditional warfighting domains."

The contract Google is reportedly looking into is one that will open to multiple companies to submit proposals and do work for, and the DoD estimates it could be a multi-billion dollar project. In a document describing what cloud providers will be expected to do, the DoD says that anyone hoping to win a contract will have to "enable access to crucial warfighting data" with a variety of classification levels (including Secret and Top Secret info - see: classified information). Additionally, the program requires that applicants be able to "provide advanced data analytics services that securely enable data-driven and timely decision-making at the tactical level."

Google says it has rules on how it can use artificial intelligence (AI) with regards to the military, which it set after employee backlash. In 2018, reports came out that Google was developing AI tech to analyze video captured by military drones as a part of the Pentagon's  Project Maven initiative. Thousands of employees signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai saying that Google shouldn't be involved in war and that the work put Google's reputation at risk and went against its stated values. Eventually, Google gave in and said it would stop working on the project.

After Google told employees it would let its Project Maven contract expire, it announced its AI ethics principles, promising that it wouldn't work on AI-powered weapons or AI surveillance projects that were likely to draw ire from human rights or privacy advocates. Google did, however, say it would continue working with the military "in many other areas."

At the time, Google said any Pentagon work it pursued would have to fit within those principles. At this point, according to the The New York Times it's unclear whether what the DoD wants would be allowed under those guidelines.

Google has continued to do work with the military since its pledge, with some projects involving AI. As the Times reports, Google announced in August 2020 that its Cloud services would be used by a contractor to analyze footage from inspection drones to determine when United States Navy ships needed maintenance. The United States Air Force is also looking to use Google Cloud  [see also: Google Cloud] to help manage airplane maintenance. In a statement emailed to The Verge, a Google spokesperson said that Google is "firmly committed to serving its public sector customers, including the DoD."

Obviously, military-related work isn't completely off the table for Google, but given its history, it's likely employees pay extra-close attention when the company is looking to work with the Pentagon. Google employees' responses to Project Maven helped kick off organization within the company - union organizers cited it as one of the collective actions that inspired unionization. The union has responded to the The New York Times' story about the current work on the DoD bid on Twitter, pledging that workers will fight the contract.

Google said in an internal document that it had successfully "slowed down" European privacy rules in collaboration with other tech companies, according to a legal filing released on Friday [2021-10-22]. Ahead of a 2019 meeting with other major tech companies, Google said in a memo that it had "been successful in slowing down and delaying" the European Union's ePrivacy Regulation process and had been "working behind the scenes hand in hand with the other companies," according to the filing.

The new details appeared in an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by Texas and 11 other states, which argued that Google had abused its dominance over the intricate technology that delivers ads to consumers online. News organizations, including The New York Times, had asked the judge in the case to remove the redactions from the complaint.

The details offer a rare look into how major tech companies have lobbied against a growing array of proposed regulations. In recent years, lawmakers around the world have proposed laws to limit the market power of the major tech companies, restrict their use of consumer data and set new rules for how they can moderate user-generated content.

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