Criticism of Google

Criticism of Google includes aggressive and contrived tax avoidance, alleged misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy, 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, and idea borrowing.

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, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program.

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

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. For example, Google has used highly contrived and artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in corporation tax owed by its UK operations. On 16 May 2013, Margaret Hodge MP, the chair of the United Kingdom Public Accounts Committee accused Google's of being "calculated and unethical" over its use of the scheme. In 2015, the UK Government introduced a new law intended to penalise Google and other large multinational corporations's artificial tax avoidance. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has claimed that this scheme of Google is "capitalism", and that he was "very proud of it". Schmidt was also criticised for his inaccurate use of the term 'capitalism' to describe billions of dollars being transferred into tax havens where no economic activity was actually taking place. On 23 January 2016, Google agreed to make a payment of £130m to the UK tax authorities "in respect of previous years."

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