The year 2020 has not been easy for the tech company that is one of the ‘rulers’ of our digital world. On the professional front, the company may have encompassed huge revenues. Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the usage of tech apps increased dramatically, and Google’s products and services also saw a major boost. However, on the other hand, Google has been in the constant line of fire of the US DOJ, lawmakers, and regulators for some of the actions that were required from the company but it failed in those areas.
One such matter that saw its employees protesting against was Google’s work in China and the way the company handled some allegations against senior executives involved in sexual harassment cases. Recently, Google even fired one of its most dynamic AI ethicist research scientists, Dr. Timnit Gebru for a research paper in which she had questioned the company’s large-sized language models and their potential risks, which resulted in protests from a large number of employees.
Google has often been slammed for its dominion over other apps and companies and how it monopolizes and influences them for its benefit. Also, it has been accused of showing anti-competitive behavior.
In October, the company faced its biggest antitrust lawsuit filed by the US DOJ for preserving its monopoly and violating the competition law, causing its dominion on web searches and online advertisement.
This lawsuit was filed after a year-long investigation. Also, it entails the details of how Google used its power and influenced phone manufacturers like Samsung and Apple to make Google as a default search engine on their devices and make the Android devices have default Google products and services, preloaded by the manufacturers. According to DOJ, Google used its power, taking advantage of the fact that it has ownership of the Android OS.
However, Google has vehemently denied all these allegations and has cited the lawsuit as deeply flawed. Also, other tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have faced such antitrust allegations but Google had to face the major brunt before the House Judiciary Committee from both Republicans and Democrats.
This issue has not been resolved yet and it seems that Google will continue to face serious charges in the following months too.
Curbing misinformation related to the US Presidential Election 2020 was a challenge.
All the tech companies were in a tight spot because of misinformation and civil unrest that was expected around the US General Election. Google had been on its toes for a long time, preparing YouTube and its other services to stop the spread of misleading information regarding the mail-in- voting system, electoral campaigns, pre-results winning announcements and all. However, despite serious efforts, YouTube failed to remove certain far-rightist videos that had false claims regarding the victors of the election. Although YouTube took them down, it failed to take immediate notice. The same happened with several live stream broadcasts. This resulted in severe backlash and criticism of Google’s lack of action against misinformation.
Verily, Google’s sister company that provided online screening tools for COVID-19 testing became a sore point for Google.
To use Verily, users needed to have accounts on Google. Now, Verily and Google were alleged for intrusive collection of data, especially when Google began developing and introducing tools for contact tracing and mapping to stop the spread of COVID-19. All of this received criticism from senators and lawmakers as they raised questions about Verily’s compliance with the federal law, HIPPA that regulates the security and privacy of medical data.
YouTube put labels to direct the viewers towards authentic sites and information portals to most of COVID- related videos and took down a lot of content related to conspiracy theories and all, but still, lawmakers and regulators found Google’s and YouTube’s efforts lacking.
I’m Ava Paul, an experienced news website author with a special focus on the entertainment section. Over the past five years, I have worked in various positions of media and communication at World Stock Market. My experience has given me extensive knowledge in writing, editing, researching and reporting on stories related to the entertainment industry.
