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, 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. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products,^[2] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its Google Ads (formerly AdWords) program.^[3][4]

Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful";^[5] 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.

Shona Ghosh, a journalist for Business Insider, noted that an increasing digital resistance movement against Google has grown.^[6]

Tax evasion

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 and The Netherlands to Bermuda. Afterwards, the company started to send £8 billion in profits a year to Bermuda.^[7] 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.^[8][9]

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.^[10] 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 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.^[10]

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 havens.^[11][12] For example, Google has used highly contrived and artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in corporate tax owed by its UK operations.^[13]

On May 15, 2013, Margaret Hodge, the chair of the United Kingdom Public Accounts Committee, accused Google of being "calculated and unethical" over its use of the scheme.^[13] Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has claimed that this scheme of Google is "capitalism",^[14] and that he was "very proud" of it.^[15]

In November 2012, the UK government announced plans to investigate Google, along with Starbucks and Amazon.com, for possible tax avoidance.^[16] In 2015, the UK Government introduced a new law intended to penalize Google's and other large multinational corporations' artificial tax avoidance.^[17]

On 20 January 2016, Google announced that it would pay £130m in back taxes to settle the investigation.^[18] 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.^[19]

Antitrust

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From the 2000s onward, Google and parent company Alphabet Inc. have faced antitrust scrutiny over alleged anti-competitive conduct in violation of competition law in a particular jurisdiction.^[20] Antitrust scrutiny of Google has primarily centered on the company's dominance in the search engine and digital advertising markets.^[21][22] The company has also been accused of leveraging control of the Android operating system to illegally curb competition.^[23]

Google has also received antitrust scrutiny over its control of the Google Play store and alleged "self-preferencing" at the expense of third-party developers.^[24][25] Additionally, Google's alleged discrimination against rivals' advertisements on YouTube has been subject to antitrust litigation.^[26][27] More recently, Google Maps and the Google Automotive Services (GAS) package have become the target of antitrust scrutiny.^[28]

European Union

The European Commission has pursued several competition law cases against Google, namely:^[29]

• 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 Froogle, which it abandoned in favor of a paid-placement-only site called Google Shopping. 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.^[30] 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.^[29]
• Complaint opened in 2015 that the dominance of the Android operating system 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.)^[31]
• Complaint opened in 2016 that Google abused its market dominance to prevent competing advertising companies to sell ads to websites already using Google AdSense^[32]
• In June 2023, the EU accused Google of abusing its control of the EU market for buying and selling online advertising to undercut rivals.^[33]

U.S. antitrust issues

In testimony before a U.S. Senate antitrust panel in September 2011, Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, said that "the Internet is the ultimate level playing field" where users were "one click away" from competitors.^[34] Nonetheless, Senator Kohl asked Schmidt if Google's market share constituted a monopoly – a 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.^[35][36]

During the hearing, Mike Lee, 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."^[34] In testimony before the same Senate panel, Jeffrey Katz and Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executives from Google's competitors Nextag and Yelp, said that Google tilts search results in its own favor, limiting choice and stifling competition.^[34]

In October 2012, it was reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission 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 for buying goods and Google Places for advertising local restaurants and businesses; whether Google's automated advertising marketplace, AdWords, 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 or Google Search; 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.^[37] Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation during a period which the co-founder of Google, Larry Page, had met with individuals at the White House 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.^[38]

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 concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2018.^[39][40][41]

In September 2023 Google's antitrust trial United States v. Google LLC (2020) began at federal court in Washington, D.C.^[42] in which the DOJ accuses Google of illegally abusing its monopoly power as the largest online search tool.

In January 2023, Google was sued by the federal government and several states for its alleged monopoly over digital advertising technology. The complaint alleged that the company had engaged in "anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct" over the previous 15 years.^[43]

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.^[44] In June 2018, the European Commission determined a $5 billion fine for Google regarding the April 2016 complaints.^[45]

In August 2016, Google was fined US$6.75 million by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) under similar allegations by Yandex.^[46]

On April 16, 2018, Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, Aaqib Javeed vs. Google LLC & Ors. resulted in the Competition Commission of India 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.^[47]

"Jedi Blue" advertising market monopolization in collusion with Facebook

According to the group of 15 state attorneys general suing Google for antitrust issues,^[48] 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 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.^[49][50] Over 200 newspapers have sued Google and Facebook to recover losses incurred by the collusion.^[51]

Google admitted that the deal contained, "a provision governing cooperation between Google and Facebook in the event of certain government investigations."^[52] 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.^[53]

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".^[54]

Eric Schmidt, 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?'".^[55] 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."^[56]

Numerous companies and individuals, for example, MyTriggers.com^[57] and transport tycoon Sir Brian Souter,^[58] 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, 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, which later printed a correction.^[59][60]

Daniel Brandt started the Google Watch website and has criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites.^[61] 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.^[62]

In testimony before a U.S. Senate antitrust panel in September 2011, Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of NexTag, 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 and against competitors like us." Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief of Yelp, 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, Google's chairman, said that Google does not "cook the books" to favor its own products and services.^[34]

Portrayals of race and gender

In 2013, Emily McManus, managing editor for TED.com, searched for "english major who taught herself calculus" which prompted Google to ask,  "Did you mean: english major who taught himself calculus?"^[63] 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.^[64]

In 2015, a man tweeted a screengrab showing that Google Photos had tagged two African American people as gorillas.^[65] Google apologized, saying they were "appalled and genuinely sorry" and was "working on longer-term fixes."^[66] An investigation by WIRED two years later showed that the company's solution has been to censor searches for "gorilla," "chimp," "chimpanzee," and "monkey."^[67]

Google Shopping rankings

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2015)

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.^[68]

As a result of this change to Google Shopping, Microsoft, who operates the competing search engine Bing, launched a public information campaign titled Scroogled.^[69] The ad campaign was developed by leading political campaign strategist Mark Penn.^[70]

It is unclear how consumers have reacted to this move. Critics charge that Google has effectively abandoned its "Don't be evil" 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.^[71][72]

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.^[73] The Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the Association of American University Presses both issued statements strongly opposing Google Print, 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."^[74]

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.^[75] 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.^[76]

Links and cached data

Kazaa and the Church of Scientology have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on their sites.^[77][78]

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. 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.^[79][80]

The New York Times has complained that the caching of their content during a web crawl, a feature utilized by search engines including Google Web Search, violates copyright.^[81] Google observes Internet standard mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled via the robots.txt 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 in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.^[82][83]

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.^[84][85]

Google Map Maker

Google Map Maker allows user-contributed data to be put into the Google Maps service,^[86] similar to OpenStreetMap it includes concepts such as organising mapping parties and mapping for humanitarian efforts.^[87] 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^[88] as their restrictive license makes it incompatible with most open projects by preventing commercial use or use by competitive services.^[89]

Google Pinyin

Google allegedly used code from Chinese company Sohu's Sogou Pinyin for its own input method editor, Google Pinyin.^[90]

Where's the Fair Use?

On February 16, 2016, internet reviewer Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic) 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 laws. The video featured stories of other YouTubers' experiences with the copyright system, including fellow Channel Awesome 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 #WTFU (Where's the Fair Use?) on social media.^[91] 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,^[92] GradeAUnderA, and Let's Play producers Mark Fishbach (Markiplier) and Seán William McLoughlin (Jacksepticeye).^[91]

Ten days later, on February 26, 2016, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki 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."^[93]

Privacy

Google's March 1, 2012 privacy change enables the company to share data across a wide variety of services.^[95] 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.^[96] Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Criticism_of_YouTube
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