Google

Google LLC is a United States technology company and the largest operating business within Alphabet Inc. Its activities include internet search, online advertising, video, mobile and web platforms, consumer software, devices, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. The company began as a search-engine project developed by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was incorporated in California in September 1998, became a public company in 2004, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet in 2015. Google Inc. was converted into a limited liability company in 2017.

Google is not interchangeable with Alphabet. Alphabet is the public holding company and legal registrant; Google is its largest subsidiary. Alphabet reports Google's activities through Google Services and Google Cloud, while reporting businesses such as Waymo under Other Bets. Alphabet does not publish a separate set of complete financial statements for Google LLC. In 2025, Alphabet reported $342.721 billion in Google Services revenue and $58.705 billion in Google Cloud revenue. Advertising accounted for $294.691 billion of Google Services revenue.^[1]

Research organizations and product brands also have narrower meanings. Google DeepMind, Google Research, the historical Google Brain team, and the Gemini model family are not alternative legal names for Google. This article covers the operating company and its development, business structure, research role, governance, and major regulatory controversies. Individual products, models, and Alphabet businesses are treated as separate subjects.

Scope and corporate identity

Alphabet Inc. describes itself as a collection of businesses, the largest of which is Google. In Alphabet's reporting structure, Google Services includes advertising-supported products and other consumer platforms, subscriptions, application distribution, and devices. Google Cloud includes infrastructure, platform services, Workspace applications, and other enterprise services. Other Bets is outside Google and includes separately managed businesses. This distinction matters because revenue, profit, employment, capital spending, and research figures published in Alphabet filings are consolidated or segment figures, not stand-alone accounts of Google LLC.^[1]

The company is headquartered at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. It is wholly owned by Alphabet and therefore no longer has publicly traded stock of its own. Shares with the tickers GOOGL and GOOG are shares of Alphabet, not of Google LLC. Likewise, an acquisition or project described as an Alphabet initiative should not be assigned to Google unless the filing or announcement identifies Google as the relevant business.^[1]

The name "Google AI" has been used on public websites and in product communications as an umbrella label. For organizational clarity, this article does not treat that label as a separate company or reportable segment. Alphabet's filing identifies Google Services and Google Cloud, while Google's research announcements identify Google DeepMind and Google Research as distinct organizations within the broader group.^[1]

History

Search project and incorporation

Page and Brin met at Stanford in 1995 and developed a search project first known as Backrub. Instead of ranking pages only by the words they contained, the system analyzed links between pages. Their 1998 paper described a large-scale search-engine prototype that used the web's link structure, along with text and other signals, to improve retrieval and ranking.^[2] The resulting ranking method became known as PageRank.

Google's corporate history dates the project to the Stanford period and records an early $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim in August 1998. The company initially operated from Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park, California.^[3] Google's later securities filing states that it was incorporated in California in September 1998 and reincorporated in Delaware in August 2003.^[4]

The business paired search with advertising sold against queries. Google's 2004 prospectus described AdWords as an auction-based program that targeted ads to search results or web content. Advertisers paid when users clicked an ad, and AdSense distributed those ads on participating third-party sites. The prospectus also said payment did not affect inclusion or ranking in unpaid search results.^[4]

Public offering and platform expansion

Google's initial public offering became effective on August 18, 2004. The final prospectus offered Class A shares at $85 each and preserved a dual-class voting structure in which Class B shares carried ten votes per share. Trading began under the ticker GOOG. The public company remained Google Inc. until the Alphabet reorganization.^[4]

During the following decade, Google expanded beyond web search through internal development and acquisitions. Three transactions and launches were especially important to its platform structure:

• Google agreed in October 2006 to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. The announcement said YouTube would keep its brand and operate independently within Google.^[5]
• The Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation of Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in December 2007. The transaction added advertising technology used beyond Google's own search pages. The FTC decision cleared the acquisition under merger law while separately noting privacy concerns raised in the proceeding.^[6]
• In November 2007, Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance announced Android as an open mobile platform. Google's announcement described a software stack rather than a single Google-made telephone.^[7]

Google released the beta version of Chrome in September 2008 and released the underlying Chromium code as an open-source project. The browser gave Google a direct role in the software through which people accessed web applications and search.^[8] Together, Android, Chrome, YouTube, application distribution, mapping, email, and productivity software broadened Google from a search website into a group of interdependent consumer and developer platforms. This article does not reproduce their individual release histories.

Alphabet reorganization

Google announced Alphabet in August 2015. The legal reorganization was completed on October 2, 2015, making Google a direct, wholly owned subsidiary of the new public holding company. The purpose of the structure was to separate Google's principal internet businesses from independently managed initiatives later reported as Other Bets. Sundar Pichai became Google's chief executive.^[9]

Alphabet converted Google Inc. into Google LLC in September 2017.^[10] The conversion changed the subsidiary's legal form but did not make Alphabet and Google the same entity. In December 2019, founders Page and Brin left their executive roles at Alphabet. Pichai remained chief executive of Google and also became chief executive of Alphabet; Page and Brin remained directors, shareholders, and co-founders.^[11]

The reorganization creates a recurring attribution problem. Waymo, for example, originated in a Google self-driving-car project but is reported as an Other Bet rather than a current Google business. Historical origin therefore does not establish present corporate scope.^[1]

Businesses and revenue model

Alphabet's 2025 filing divides revenue associated with Google into Google Services and Google Cloud. It does not report a single audited "Google LLC revenue" line or a stand-alone Google net-income figure. The following figures are Alphabet disclosures for the year ended December 31, 2025, in millions of United States dollars.^[1]

Scroll sideways for more →

Advertising remained the largest disclosed source of Google Services revenue. Google sells ads through auctions and other arrangements across its own services and third-party properties. This creates more than one commercial role: Google can operate the consumer service, supply tools to advertisers, provide technology to publishers, and run an exchange or network connecting the parties. The overlap is central to regulatory scrutiny of its advertising business.^[1]

The subscriptions, platforms, and devices line combines businesses with different economics. It includes fees from consumer subscriptions, applications and in-app purchases, and hardware. The filing does not provide revenue for every product within that line. Product-level estimates from market analysts should therefore not be presented as audited Google figures.^[1]

Google Cloud serves organizations rather than being only a consumer storage brand. Its reported revenue includes Google Cloud Platform infrastructure and platform services, Google Workspace communication and productivity applications, and other enterprise services. Alphabet reports Google Cloud separately from Google Services because their customers, cost structures, and sales models differ.^[1]

Google benefits from integration across products, but the legal and economic relationships vary. Android is an operating-system platform, Chrome is a browser, Google Search is a search service, YouTube is a subsidiary and video platform, and Google Cloud is an enterprise business. Their presence in one corporate group does not mean that they share a single product, privacy policy, or revenue model.^[1]

Artificial intelligence and research

Technical contributions

Google has released research, software, and specialized hardware that influenced modern AI systems:

• Google open-sourced TensorFlow in November 2015. The announcement described a machine-learning system that could run from mobile devices to data centers and that had been used internally before the public release.^[12]
• Google researchers published an analysis of the first-generation Tensor Processing Unit in 2017. The paper says the custom inference accelerator had been deployed in Google data centers since 2015. Its comparisons were against then-contemporary processors and should not be read as current hardware rankings.^[13]
• Google Brain and Google Research authors introduced the Transformer architecture in a 2017 conference paper. The paper replaced recurrence and convolution in its tested sequence-transduction architecture with attention mechanisms and reported machine-translation results. It did not claim that every later language model would use the design.^[14]

These examples establish research contributions, not exclusive ownership of the fields that developed from them. TensorFlow has external maintainers and users; Transformer variants have been developed by many organizations; and specialized AI accelerators are produced by multiple companies.

Research organizations

Google has conducted machine learning research in product teams and dedicated research groups. Google Brain began as a deep-learning research project and later became a major internal team. DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014, developed its own research organization. In April 2023, Google combined Google Brain and DeepMind into Google DeepMind under Demis Hassabis. The announcement assigned the combined group responsibility for developing general-purpose AI systems while retaining product-oriented collaboration across Google.^[15]

Google Research remains a distinct organization. A 2024 organizational update described Google DeepMind as the main home for model-building teams and described Google Research as continuing work in areas including algorithms, systems, quantum computing, applied science, and the societal dimensions of technology.^[16] The distinction is organizational rather than absolute: researchers and product teams can collaborate, and responsibilities can change.

Google introduced the first Gemini models in December 2023 as a cross-company effort led by Google DeepMind.^[17] Detailed model versions, benchmark claims, application features, and availability belong in the Gemini model article, because those facts change more quickly than the identity of Google as a company.

Product deployment and principles

Google applies AI across search, advertising, cloud services, productivity software, media, and consumer applications. A model release does not imply immediate deployment in every product or country. Model access, data handling, and safety controls can differ among consumer interfaces, enterprise contracts, developer APIs, and research releases.^[1]

Google first published company-wide AI Principles in 2018. Its current principles emphasize innovation, human oversight, due diligence, privacy, security, safety, bias mitigation, and alignment with international law and human rights.^[18] They are internal commitments rather than legislation or an independent certification.

The policy has changed over time. In 2018, employee opposition to Google's work on the United States Department of Defense's Project Maven preceded the company's decision not to renew that contract, according to Reuters.^[19] The 2018 principles included explicit exclusions for weapons and certain surveillance uses. In February 2025, Google revised the principles and removed those categorical exclusions; the current text instead uses broader commitments concerning harmful outcomes, oversight, international law, and human rights.^[18][20]

Research governance has also produced disputes. In December 2020, ethical-AI researcher Timnit Gebru left Google following a conflict over an internal email and the review of a paper about risks associated with large language models. Gebru said she had been fired; Google disputed that characterization and said it accepted conditions she had set for resignation.^[21] The episode prompted debate about academic freedom, diversity, and the independence of corporate ethics research. The competing accounts should not be collapsed into a single uncontested dismissal narrative.

Leadership and governance

Pichai has led Google since 2015 and Alphabet since December 2019. Because Google LLC is wholly owned, its ultimate corporate governance is tied to Alphabet's board and voting structure. Alphabet retains three classes of stock. Class B shares carry ten votes each, while Class A shares carry one vote and Class C shares carry no ordinary voting rights.^[22]

Alphabet's 2025 proxy statement reported that, as of April 8, 2025, Page held 27.1 percent of total voting power and Brin held 25.2 percent. Their combined voting power was therefore a majority even though their economic ownership was smaller. The same filing identified Pichai as chief executive of Alphabet and Google and a member of Alphabet's board.^[22] These are Alphabet governance facts, not evidence that the founders hold executive jobs at Google.

The public holding company publishes consolidated financial reports, elects the board, and allocates capital across Google and Other Bets. Google management operates the subsidiary's businesses within that framework. As a result, statements such as "Google invested" or "Google employed" need a source that distinguishes the subsidiary from Alphabet-wide activity.

Competition and regulation

Google's roles in search distribution, mobile software, application distribution, and advertising technology have produced major competition cases. A finding in one market does not establish liability in every Google business, and a regulator's accusation is not equivalent to a final judgment. The status below is current through July 28, 2026.

United States

In August 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that Google had unlawfully maintained monopolies in general search services and general search text advertising. A final judgment entered in December 2025 restricted exclusive distribution contracts involving Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app and required specified search-data and syndication access. The court did not order the divestiture of Chrome or Android. Compliance proceedings continued in 2026.^[23] Google appealed the liability and remedy rulings in May 2026, so the appellate process was pending at the research cutoff.^[24]

A separate case concerns advertising technology used by publishers. In April 2025, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found Google liable for monopolizing publisher ad-server and ad-exchange markets. The court did not accept every theory advanced by the government. The Department of Justice's case page records a remedies trial and final briefs in 2025 but, as of the cutoff, no final remedies judgment.^[25]

European Union

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on July 2, 2026 that restrictions associated with Google's Android licensing formed part of an anticompetitive strategy and upheld a fine of about EUR 4.1 billion, concluding the appeal from the General Court's judgment.^[26]

In September 2025, the European Commission fined Google EUR 2.95 billion for favoring its own online display-advertising technology services and ordered it to end the self-preferencing practices and address conflicts of interest in the adtech supply chain.^[27]

On July 23, 2026, the European Commission issued two Digital Markets Act noncompliance decisions. It fined Google EUR 460 million for favoring its own services in Google Search and EUR 430 million for restrictions on steering users from Google Play to alternative purchase channels, for a combined EUR 890 million. The Commission also ordered Google to end the noncompliance.^[28] These DMA decisions are distinct from the older EU competition-law cases.

Privacy and data practices

Google's data practices vary by service and user setting. This section therefore focuses on bounded enforcement records rather than treating every product as if it collected and used data in the same way.

Regulators have repeatedly challenged particular practices. In 2019, Google and its YouTube subsidiary agreed to pay $170 million to settle Federal Trade Commission and New York allegations that YouTube collected personal information from children without parental consent in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule. The settlement also required a system for channel owners to identify child-directed content.^[29]

In 2022, Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle a 40-state investigation of its location-tracking disclosures and settings. The states alleged that users could turn off Location History while a separate Web and App Activity setting continued to collect some location information. The settlement required clearer disclosures and controls; it resolved allegations rather than a trial judgment.^[30]

These cases should be described with their legal posture. A settlement can impose payment and conduct obligations without establishing every allegation through adjudication. Conversely, the absence of an admission does not erase the agreed obligations.

Environmental footprint

Google operates energy- and water-intensive data centers and buys large quantities of computing hardware. Its environmental reporting combines operational impacts, supply-chain emissions, energy procurement, water use, waste, and estimates of emissions avoided through products. Company estimates of enabled or avoided emissions use counterfactual methods and should not be subtracted directly from its reported greenhouse-gas inventory.^[31]

Google's 2026 Environmental Report, covering 2025, says the company contracted for more than 12 gigawatts of new clean energy, replenished approximately 7.7 billion gallons of water, and diverted 88 percent of operational waste from disposal at Google-owned and operated data centers. The report also says its water replenishment equaled about 78 percent of freshwater consumption. These are company-reported figures and include methodological qualifications.^[31]

Independent reporting on the same disclosure noted that Google's electricity demand rose 37 percent in 2025, total greenhouse-gas emissions rose 18 percent, and water consumption rose 34 percent to 10.9 billion gallons. The increases were associated with rapid data-center and AI-infrastructure expansion, even as electricity-related emissions declined and clean-energy contracting increased.^[32] Efficiency per computation therefore does not by itself establish that Google's total environmental impact is falling.

References

1. ^Alphabet Inc., "Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2026. sec.gov/...goog-20251231
2. ^Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," Computer Networks, 1998. research.google/...-hypertextual-web-search-engine
3. ^Google, "From the garage to the Googleplex," company history. about.google/...our-story
4. ^Google Inc., "Final Prospectus," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, August 18, 2004. sec.gov/...d424b4
5. ^Google, "Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock," October 9, 2006. googlepress.blogspot.com/...ire-youtube-for-165_09
6. ^Federal Trade Commission, "Federal Trade Commission Closes Google/DoubleClick Investigation," December 20, 2007. ftc.gov/...-closes-googledoubleclick-investigation
7. ^Google, "Where's my Gphone?" November 5, 2007. googleblog.blogspot.com/...wheres-my-gphone
8. ^Chromium project, "Welcome to Chromium," September 2, 2008. blog.chromium.org/...09
9. ^Alphabet Inc., "2015 Annual Report," 2016. abc.xyz/...2015_alphabet_annual_report.pdf
10. ^Alphabet Inc., "Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2018. sec.gov/...goog10-kq42017
11. ^Alphabet Inc., "Alphabet management change," December 3, 2019. abc.xyz/...default
12. ^Google, "TensorFlow: smarter machine learning, for everyone," November 9, 2015. blog.google/...orflow-smarter-machine-learning-for
13. ^Norman P. Jouppi et al., "In-Datacenter Performance Analysis of a Tensor Processing Unit," ISCA, 2017. research.google/...sis-of-a-tensor-processing-unit
14. ^Ashish Vaswani et al., "Attention Is All You Need," NIPS, 2017. proceedings.neurips.cc/...ttention-is-all-you-need
15. ^Google, "April AI update: bringing together the Brain and DeepMind teams," April 20, 2023. blog.google/...april-ai-update
16. ^Google, "Building AI for the future," April 18, 2024. blog.google/...building-ai-future-april-2024
17. ^Google, "Introducing Gemini: our largest and most capable AI model," December 6, 2023. blog.google/...google-gemini-ai
18. ^Google, "AI Principles," current version reviewed July 28, 2026. ai.google/principles
19. ^Reuters, "Google to scrub U.S. military deal protested by employees," June 2, 2018. m.uk.investing.com/...by-employees--source-1201033
20. ^Associated Press, "How US tech giants supplied Israel with AI models, raising questions about tech's role in warfare," February 18, 2025. apnews.com/...430f6f15aab420806163558732726ad9
21. ^Reuters, "Top AI ethics researcher says Google fired her; company denies it," December 4, 2020. investing.com/...red-her-company-denies-it-2362453
22. ^Alphabet Inc., "2025 Proxy Statement," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. sec.gov/...goog012701-def14a
23. ^U.S. Department of Justice, "U.S. and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC, 2020 case," case record updated July 23, 2026. justice.gov/...us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc
24. ^Reuters, "Google appeals US court ruling on search monopoly," May 22, 2026. m.investing.com/...ling-on-search-monopoly-4707292
25. ^U.S. Department of Justice, "U.S. and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC, 2023 case," case record updated December 26, 2025. justice.gov/...-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2023
26. ^Court of Justice of the European Union, "Google Android: the Court of Justice upholds Google's fine of around EUR 4.1 billion," press release 93/26, July 2, 2026. curia.europa.eu/...cp260093en.pdf
27. ^European Commission, "Commission fines Google EUR 2.95 billion over abusive practices in online advertising technology," September 5, 2025. ec.europa.eu/...ip_25_1992
28. ^European Commission, "Commission fines Google EUR 890 million for breaches of the Digital Markets Act," July 23, 2026. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/...gital-markets-act
29. ^Federal Trade Commission, "Google and YouTube Will Pay Record $170 Million for Alleged Violations of Children's Privacy Law," September 4, 2019. ftc.gov/...lleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law
30. ^New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, "Forty Attorneys General Announce Historic Settlement with Google over Location Tracking Practices," November 14, 2022. njoag.gov/...ogle-over-location-tracking-practices
31. ^Google, "2026 Environmental Report," June 30, 2026. sustainability.google/...2026-environmental-report
32. ^Amy Harder, "Google's AI boom sends emissions, power use soaring," Axios, June 30, 2026. axios.com/...google-ai-boom-emissions-power-use