What's Fundamentally Wrong with Google?

Google has received significant criticism involving issues regarding privacy concerns, tax avoidance, search neutrality, antitrust, censorship and abuse of monopoly power.

Despite its flaws, Google has a strong reputation amongst its users. The tech giant specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include search engine, online advertising technologies, cloud computing, software, and hardware. 

Google is the most visited website worldwide.

History of Google

The company was founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.

Google went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

Source: Finances Online

Sundar Pichai 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.

Source: Statista

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

What Are The Most Popular Google Products And Services?

Source: Matrix 360

Google is renowned in creating very innovative products and services.

Here are some of the most popular products and services developed by Google:

• Google Search Engine

• Gmail

• Google Drive

• Google Maps

• Google Chrome

• YouTube

• Android

• Google Docs

• Google Drive

• Google Translate

• Adwords

• Google Play

• Google News

What's Currently Wrong with Google?

Google's ad revenues face a long term threat due to the shift from more profitable desktop ads to less profitable mobile ads and profitless voice searches. Ad revenue is also being impacted in the short term due to competition from Amazon, though it is still increasing steadily.

Source: Moscow Times

Google is mainly criticised for tax avoidance, manipulation of search results, search neutrality, monopolistic position, antitrust and search neutrality. 

If Google Cloud doesn't start to close the market share gap with Amazon and Microsoft, it may get left behind, permanently unable to compete. Within the next decade the great migration to cloud will be over, and increasing market share will become much more difficult.

There have been ongoing cries for increased regulation of tech companies including Google. Depending on what if anything is passed, this could be disastrous for Google if it splits up the company or bans things like tracking that are critical to Google's profitability.