SRC - Google & Alphabet
Folder: 05 - SOURCE MATERIAL Supporting: Google & Alphabet
Scale and Structure
Alphabet Inc. — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc. Confirms: 350 billion revenue 2024. 190,000+ employees. 466 subsidiaries. Full subsidiary list confirmed.
Revenue Memo — Who Owns Google (2026) https://www.revenuememo.com/p/who-owns-google Confirms: 90% global search market. $20 billion annual payment to Apple for Safari default confirmed. Federal monopoly ruling 2024 confirmed. Waymo expansion cities confirmed.
Thomas Net — Complete Alphabet Subsidiary List https://www.thomasnet.com/insights/a-complete-list-of-alphabet-owned-companies/ Google Services revenue $304.9B confirmed. 87% of Alphabet total. 100 hours video uploaded per minute to YouTube confirmed.
Data Collection
Schmidt, D.C. — Vanderbilt University (2018) “Google Data Collection” Commissioned by Digital Content Next https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/google-data-collection.pdf Android location 340 times/24hrs. Passive data 2:1 to active confirmed. iPhone still sends data to Google confirmed.
Chrome Data Collection — 20 Types https://kahana.co/blog/google-chrome-data-collection-advertising-practices-2025 20 data types vs 6 for competitors.
The Monopoly Ruling
US Federal Court — 2024 Judge Amit Mehta ruled Google holds illegal monopoly in search. $20 billion annual Apple payment as mechanism confirmed. Remedies pending as of early 2026. Reuters / Washington Post confirmed.
EU Antitrust Fines €8 billion+ since 2017. Search bias, Android bundling, advertising practices. European Commission documentation.
The AI Weapons Reversal
Washington Post — February 4, 2025 First report on AI principles change. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/04/google-ai-policies-weapons-harm/ Confirms: weapons and surveillance pledges removed quietly.
Human Rights Watch — February 6, 2025 https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/02/06/google-announces-willingness-develop-ai-weapons Confirms: “Those red lines are no longer applicable.” Previous principles quoted in full. New principles analysed.
CNBC — February 4, 2025 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/04/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-surveillance.html Blog post by Hassabis and Manyika confirmed. 50+ employees fired after Nimbus protests confirmed. Internal forum restrictions on political discussions confirmed.
Al Jazeera — February 5, 2025 https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/2/5/google-drops-pledge-not-to-use-ai-for-weapons-surveillance Original 2018 AI Principles quoted. Project Maven history confirmed. Trump inauguration attendance by Pichai confirmed.
Project Nimbus
Time Magazine — April 2024 https://time.com/7013685/google-ai-deepmind-military-contracts-israel/ Contract value: $1.2 billion. 200 DeepMind employees letter May 2024 confirmed. Image categorisation and object tracking confirmed. State-owned weapons manufacturers provision confirmed. Google’s internal concern about human rights violations — four months before signing — confirmed. Three months after letter: no action by Google confirmed.
HR Grapevine — August 2024 https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-28-google-deepmind-workers-protest-over-israeli-military-contracts 200 employees — 5% of DeepMind workforce confirmed. Letter dated May 16, 2024 confirmed. DeepMind acquisition promise — never used for military purposes — confirmed as 2015 commitment.
Joint Warfighting Cloud Contract
AutoNorms — February 2025 https://www.autonorms.eu/googles-brave-new-world-big-tech-military-ai-and-the-trump-effect/ JWCC contract confirmed. $9 billion ceiling. 2022 award confirmed. DoD description quoted: “critical in creating a global, resilient, and secure information environment that enables warfighting and mission command.”
NSA / PRISM
The Guardian / Washington Post — June 2013 Original Snowden PRISM reports. Google confirmed on participant list. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
Gmail
Google Court Filing — August 2013 Non-Gmail users have no “reasonable expectation” of confidentiality. Consumer Watchdog revealed filing. The Guardian, August 15, 2013.
YouTube Algorithm
PMC Systematic Review (2020) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7613872/ 14 of 23 studies implicated recommender in problematic pathways.
Dartmouth / Science Advances (2023) Extremist content driven by subscriptions not recommendations. https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2023/09/subscriptions-drive-views-extremist-videos-youtube
PNAS (2025) — 9,000 participants Filter bubbles limited effect. https://dcknox.github.io/files/LiuEtAl_AlgoRecsLimitedPolarizationYouTube.pdf
Honest position: Results mixed. Personalisation confirmed. Radicalisation mechanism contested.
Still To Source
- Waymo data collection policy — what passenger and environmental data is retained and for how long #investigate
- Verily health data sharing agreements — specific insurance and government partnerships #investigate
- Nest audio recording incidents — independent security research primary citations investigate
- JWCC contract full scope — Google’s specific deliverables beyond cloud infrastructure #investigate
- Project Nimbus — full contract text, still partially classified #investigate
- Chrome divestiture ruling — monitor for 2026 remedy decision #investigate