Criticism of Google
Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users,[1] censorship of search results and content, its cooperation with the Israeli military on Project Nimbus targeting Palestinians[2] and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".
Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies.
In addition to social media, these algorithms have received substantial criticism as a driver of political polarization, internet addiction disorder, and the promotion of misinformation, disinformation, violence and other externalities.
[13] Sally Hubbard argues that as a monopoly, sites like YouTube and Google search result in more fake news than if there were more competition in the market that could make it harder to promote harmful content by just gaming one algorithm.
This allowed Google to retain its profitable monopoly over online ad exchanges, while saving Facebook billions of dollars on attempts to build competing systems.
[79][80] 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 which is part of DMCA.
"[103] In 2013, a class-action lawsuit was filed in the northern district of California, accusing Google of “storing and intentionally, systematically and repeatedly divulging” users' search queries and histories to third-party websites.
[118] 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.
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.
[135] In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices.
In May 2011, Google cancelled the AdWord advertisement purchased by a Dublin sex workers' rights group named "Turn Off the Blue Light" (TOBL),[141] claiming that it represented an "egregious violation" of company ad policy by "selling adult sexual services".
In November 2007, the account of Wael Abbas, a well known Egyptian activist who posted videos of police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations, was blocked for three days.
[151][152][153] In February 2008, a video produced by the American Life League that accused a Planned Parenthood television commercial of promoting recreational sex was removed, then reinstated two days later.
[154] In October, a video by political speaker Pat Condell criticizing the British government for officially sanctioning sharia law courts in Britain was removed, then reinstated two days later.
[156] 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.
"[157] 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 (COPPA), which prohibits internet companies from collecting data from kids under 13.
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.
[174][175] 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.
[189] 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.
[196][197][198] Also in January 2022, she criticized the company's use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in testimony to the Washington House of Representatives for whistleblower protection legislature, which she said intimidated her from speaking out about the discrimination she allegedly witnessed and experienced.
[212] Google's income shifting—involving strategies known to lawyers as the "Double Irish" and the "Dutch Sandwich"—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.
[213][214] 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.
[226][227][228] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford also criticizes Google 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 and patent theft which hurts U.S. companies," while simultaneously not renewing further research and development collaborations with the Pentagon.
[232] Google has pledged to spend millions of dollars to investigate cheap, clean, renewable energy, and has installed solar panels on the roofs at its Mountain View facilities.
In the United Kingdom during March 2010, Liberal Democrats MP Paul Keetch and unnamed military officers criticized Google for including pictures of the entrance to the British Army Special Air Service (SAS) base, stating that terrorists might use the information to plan attacks.
"[249][250] 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 August 2010, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched a national campaign urging the corporation to disclose all of its political spending.
[257] Google has sponsored meetings of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute who have had speakers including libertarian Republican and Tea Party member, and Senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul.
[277] In April 2020, Extinction Rebellion launched "agreenergoogle.com", a spoof website containing a fake announcement by Google CEO Sundar Pichai claiming that "they would stop funding of organizations that deny or work to block action on climate change, effective immediately".
[286][287] 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.
