Google has had criticism over issues such as aggressive tax avoidance, search neutrality, copyright, censorship of search results and content, and privacy. Other criticisms are alleged misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of other people's intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate Internet privacy, and the energy consumption of its servers, as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, anti-competitive practices, and patent infringement.
In a 2022 National Labor Relations Board ruling, court documents suggested that Google sponsored a secretive project—Project Vivian—to counsel its employees and to discourage them from forming unions.
On May 1, 2023, Google placed an ad against the Brazilian Congressional Bill No. 2630, an anti-disinformation law that was about to be approved, on its search homepage in Brazil, calling on its users to ask congressional representatives to oppose the legislation. The country's government and judiciary accused the company of undue interference in the congressional debate, saying it could amount to abuse of economic power and ordering the company to change the ad within two hours of notification or face fines of R$1 million (2023) (US$185,528.76) per non-compliance hour. The company then promptly removed the ad.
Google has a US$1.2 billion artificial intelligence and surveillance contract with the Israeli military known as Project Nimbus. According to Google employees, the Israeli military could use this technology to expand its surveillance of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Google relocated an outspoken employee overseas, and the employee claimed it was a "retaliation for publicly criticizing the contract". Other Palestinian employees have described an "institutionalised bias" within the company.
In 2021, Google and Amazon engaged in negotiations for a substantial cloud computing agreement valued at $1.2 billion, during which Israel insisted on the inclusion of a confidential code referred to as the "blink mechanism". This stipulation compelled Google and Amazon to essentially disregard legal responsibilities in various nations. Israel expressed apprehension that the data transferred to the cloud services of these global corporations might be accessible to foreign law enforcement agencies. As per documents disclosed to The Guardian, both Google and Amazon consented to the blink mechanism in order to finalize the profitable agreement.
Google reaches market domination of the global web search engine market with around 90% market share. The economic moat includes web browser defaults and friction in customer switching. Google reportedly paid Apple $22 billion in 2022 to maintain its position as the default search engine on Safari. It marks one of the largest payments between two tech giants in recent years.
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European Union
On June 27, 2017, the company received a record fine of €2.42 billion from the European Union (EU) for "promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results". On July 18, 2018, the European Commissioner for Competition fined Google €4.34 billion for breaching European Union competition law. The abuse of dominants position has been referred to as Google's constraint applied to Android device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic on Android devices goes to the Google search engine. On October 9, 2018, Google confirmed that it had appealed the fine to the General Court of the EU.
On March 20, 2019, the European Commission imposed a €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion) fine on Google for preventing rivals from being able to "compete and innovate fairly" in the online advertising market. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google had violated EU antitrust rules by "imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites" that required them to exclude search results from Google's rivals. On September 14, 2022, Google lost the appeal of a €4.125 billion (£3.5 billion) fine, which was ruled to be paid after it was proved by the European Commission that Google forced Android phone-makers to carry Google's search and web browser apps. Since the initial accusations, Google has changed its policy.
On July 2, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed Google's appeal, upholding the fine of around €4.1 billion for abusing its dominant position in relation to the Android operating system.
In March 2024, a former Google software engineer and Chinese national named Linwei Ding was accused of stealing confidential artificial intelligence information from the company and handing it to Chinese corporations. Ding had allegedly stolen over 500 files from the company over the course of 5 years, having been hired in 2019. Upon discovering Ding had been in contact with Chinese state-owned companies, Google notified the FBI, who carried on the investigation of the data breach. On September 10, 2024, Europe's top court imposed a €2.4 billion fine on Google for abusing its dominance in the shopping comparison market, marking the conclusion of a case that began in 2009 with a complaint from British firm Foundem.
On September 18, 2024, Alphabet's Google won a €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) antitrust fine from the EU, while Qualcomm's efforts to repeal a penalty were unsuccessful. The General Court agreed with many of the European Commission's findings but annulled the Google fine, stating that the Commission failed to consider all relevant factors and did not demonstrate harm to innovation or consumers. Google noted that it had already changed its contract practices in 2016. Meanwhile, Qualcomm saw its fine reduced slightly but failed to overturn the ruling regarding its predatory pricing against Icera. Both companies have options to appeal further. On September 5, 2025, the European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.47 billion), for breaching EU antitrust rules. Regulators say Google abused its dominance by giving preferential treatment to its ad exchange within its publisher ad server and ad-buying tools.
In late July, the European Union fined Google 890 million euros ($1 billion) for violating digital antitrust regulations by favoring its own services and apps on Google Play and its search engine to the detriment of competitors.
United States
After U.S. Congressional hearings in July 2020, and a report from the U.S. House of Representatives' Antitrust Subcommittee released in early October, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on October 20, 2020, asserting that it has illegally maintained its monopoly position in web search and search advertising. The lawsuit alleged that Google engaged in anticompetitive behavior by paying Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion to be the default search engine on iPhones. Later that month, both Facebook and Alphabet agreed to "cooperate and assist one another" in the face of investigation into their online advertising practices. Another suit was brought against Google in 2023 for illegally monopolizing the advertising technology market. In August 2024, District of Columbia U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google held a monopoly in online search and text advertising in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
On October 8, 2024, The U.S. government suggested it could request Google to divest parts of its business, such as the Chrome browser and Android, due to its alleged monopoly in online search. The Justice Department aimed to limit Google's growing dominance in areas like AI. Google, which intended to appeal, argued that the proposals were too extreme, while also dealing with other antitrust cases involving its app store and advertising operations. In November 2024, the Justice Department proposed major changes to curb Google's online search monopoly, including forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser, share search data with competitors, and end exclusive agreements that make Google the default search engine on devices like iPhones. The DoJ also sought a ban on Google re-entering the browser market for five years and restrictions on its investments in rival search or AI technologies. Google called these proposals excessive and harmful to consumers, pledging to appeal. A trial on the case was scheduled for April 2025, though the incoming administration and new DoJ leadership could potentially alter the course of the proceedings.
In September 2024, Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally found that Google engaged in anti-competitive practices in the online advertising technology market, potentially harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers. The investigation claimed Google used its market power to prevent rivals from competing fairly, affecting billions spent on digital ads. Google rejected the findings as flawed, stating that its ad tech benefits businesses. If found guilty, Google could face penalties of up to 10% of its global turnover. Similar investigations are ongoing in the U.S. and EU, where regulators have suggested that Google may need to sell part of its ad-tech business. In the advertising technology case in the U.S., a judge ruled that Google had an illegal monopoly and required changes to Google's practices to alleviate the issues but rejected the Justice Department's request that Google be broken up.
Gender discrimination lawsuit
In 2017, three women sued Google, accusing the company of violating California's Equal Pay Act by underpaying its female employees. The lawsuit cited the wage gap was around $17,000 and that Google locked women into lower career tracks, leading to smaller salaries and bonuses. In June 2022, Google agreed to pay a $118 million settlement to 15,550 female employees working in California since 2013. As a part of the settlement, Google also agreed to hire a third party to analyze its hiring and compensation practices.
Censorship
According to Ryan Gallagher of The Intercept in August 2018, Google was developing for the People's Republic of China a censored version of its search engine (known as Dragonfly) "that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest". Google was grilled at a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on the project one month later. The project was canceled in December following the backlash it garnered both externally and internally within the company.
Data loss
In May 2024, a misconfiguration in Google Cloud led to the accidental deletion of UniSuper's $135 billion Australian pension fund account, affecting over half a million members who were unable to access their accounts for a week. The outage, attributed to a cloud service error and not a cyberattack, prompted a joint apology from UniSuper and Google Cloud executives, who assured members that no personal data was compromised and restoration efforts were underway.
Data privacy
On October 8, 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google and Alphabet due to "non-public" Google+ account data being exposed as a result of a bug that allowed app developers to gain access to the private information of users. The litigation was settled in July 2020 for $7.5 million with a payout to claimants of at least $5 each, with a maximum of $12 each. On January 21, 2019, French data regulator CNIL imposed a record €50 million fine on Google for breaching the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The judgment claimed Google had failed to sufficiently inform users of its methods for collecting data to personalize advertising. Google issued a statement saying it was "deeply committed" to transparency and was "studying the decision" before determining its response. In November 2019, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services began investigation into Project Nightingale, to assess whether the "mass collection of individuals' medical records" complied with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google secretively began the project in 2018, with St. Louis-based healthcare company Ascension.
In 2019, a hub for critics of Google dedicated to abstaining from using Google products coalesced in the Reddit online community /r/degoogle. The DeGoogle grassroots campaign continues to grow as privacy activists highlight information about Google products, and the associated incursion on personal privacy rights by the company.
In early June 2020, a $5 billion class-action lawsuit was filed against Google by a group of consumers, alleging that Chrome's Incognito browsing mode still collects their user history. The lawsuit became known in March 2021 when a federal judge denied Google's request to dismiss the case, ruling that they must face the group's charges. Reuters reported that the lawsuit alleged that Google's CEO Sundar Pichai sought to keep the users unaware of this issue.
In April 2024, it was announced that Google agreed to settle this lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement Google agreed to destroy billions of data records to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked the internet use of people who thought they were browsing privately. On January 6, 2022, France's data privacy regulatory body CNIL fined Alphabet's Google 150 million euros (US$169 million) for not allowing its Internet users an easy refusal of cookies along with Facebook.
In August 2024, Google sent an email to users informing them of its legal obligation to disclose certain confidential information to U.S. government authorities. The company stated that when it receives valid requests from government agencies to produce documents without redacting confidential customer information, it may produce such documents even if they are confidential to users; however, it will request confidential treatment of such information from the government. In January 2025, U.S. federal judge Richard Seeborg rejected Google's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit claims Google collected data from users who had specifically opted out of tracking. In September 2025, a federal jury decided that Google must pay $425 million. Google said it would appeal the decision.
Geolocation
Google has been criticized for continuing to collect location data from users who disabled location-sharing settings. In 2020, the FBI used a geofence warrant to request data from Google about Android devices near the Seattle Police Officers Guild building following an arson attempt during Black Lives Matter protests. Google provided anonymized location data from devices in the area, which raised privacy concerns due to the potential inclusion of unrelated protesters.
Copyright infringement
On March 20, 2024, Google was fined approximately $270 million by French regulators for using content from news outlets in France without proper disclosure to train its AI, Bard, now renamed Gemini, violating a previous commitment to negotiate content use transparently and fairly.
U.S. government contracts
Following media reports about PRISM, the NSA's massive electronic surveillance program, in June 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Google. According to unnamed sources, Google joined the PRISM program in 2009. Google has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on drone software through the 2017 Project Maven that could be used to improve the accuracy of drone strikes. In April 2018, thousands of Google employees, including senior engineers, signed a letter urging Google CEO Sundar Pichai to end this controversial contract with the Pentagon. Google ultimately decided not to renew this DoD contract, which was set to expire in 2019. In 2022 Google shared a $9 billion contract from the Pentagon for cloud computing with Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle.
Google Nest hidden microphone incident
In February 2019, a privacy incident involving the Google Nest Guard system went public. The controversy stemmed from the fact that Nest Guard, a security device that was part of the Nest Secure system, contained a hidden microphone that was not disclosed in any product specifications. It resulted in a public relations failure.
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