GOOGL 10-K diff: FY 2023-12-31 → FY 2024-12-31
Paragraph-level diff of Risk Factors (Item 1A) and Management's Discussion & Analysis (Item 7).
Item 1A · Risk Factors
+80 paragraphs −74 paragraphs ~74 changed
FY 2023-12-31 (earlier)
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described below, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results, and affect the trading price of our Class A and Class C stock.
Risks Specific to our CompanyWe generate a significant portion of our revenues from advertising. Reduced spending by advertisers, a loss of partners, or new and existing technologies that block ads online and/or affect our ability to customize ads could harm our business.
We generated more than 75% of total revenues from online advertising in 2023. Many of our advertisers, companies that distribute our products and services, digital publishers, and content providers can terminate their contracts with us at any time. These partners may not continue to do business with us if we do not create more value (such as increased numbers of users or customers, new sales leads, increased brand awareness, or more effective monetization) than their available alternatives. Changes to our advertising policies and data privacy practices, such as our initiatives to phase out third-party cookies, as well as changes to other companies’ advertising and/or data privacy practices have in the past, and may in the future, affect the advertising that we are able to provide. In addition, technologies have been developed that make customized ads more difficult, or that block the display of ads altogether, and some providers of online services have integrated these technologies that could potentially impair the availability and functionality of third-party digital advertising. Failing to provide superior value or deliver advertisements effectively and competitively could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.In addition, expenditures by advertisers tend to correlate with overall economic conditions. Adverse macroeconomic conditions have affected, and may in the future affect, the demand for advertising, resulting in fluctuations in the amounts our advertisers spend on advertising, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.
We face intense competition. If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, customers, and other partners, we may not remain competitive, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Our business environment is rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Our businesses face changing technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of rival products and services. To compete successfully, we must accurately anticipate technology developments and deliver innovative, relevant and useful products, services, and technologies in a timely manner. As our businesses evolve, the competitive pressure to innovate will encompass a wider range of products and services. We must continue to invest significant resources in technical infrastructure and R&D, including through acquisitions, in order to enhance our technology, products, and services.We have many competitors in different industries. Our current and potential domestic and international competitors range from large and established companies to emerging start-ups. Some competitors have longer operating histories and well-established relationships in various sectors. They can use their experience and resources in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by making acquisitions and entering into other strategic arrangements; continuing to invest heavily in technical infrastructure, R&D, and in talent; initiating intellectual property and competition claims (whether or not meritorious); and continuing to compete for users, advertisers, customers, and content providers. Further, discrepancies in enforcement of existing laws may enable our lesser known competitors to aggressively interpret those laws without commensurate scrutiny, thereby affording them competitive advantages. Our competitors may also be able to innovate and provide products and services faster than we can or may foresee the need for products and services before we do.
We are expanding our investment in AI across the entire company. This includes generative AI and continuing to integrate AI capabilities into our products and services. AI technology and services are highly competitive, rapidly evolving, and require significant investment, including development and operational costs, to meet the changing needs and expectations of our existing users and attract new users. Our ability to deploy certain AI technologies critical for our products and services and for our business strategy may depend on the availability and pricing of third-party equipment and technical infrastructure. Additionally, other companies may develop AI products and technologies that are similar or superior to our technologies or more cost-effective to deploy. Other companies may also have (or in the future may obtain) patents or other proprietary rights that would prevent, limit, or interfere with our ability to make, use, or sell our own AI products and services.
Our financial condition and operating results may also suffer if our products and services are not responsive to the evolving needs and desires of our users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. As new and existing technologies continue to develop, competitors and new entrants may be able to offer experiences that are, or11.
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Alphabet Inc.that are seen to be, substantially similar to or better than ours. These technologies could reduce usage of our products and services, and force us to compete in different ways and expend significant resources to develop and operate equal or better products and services. Competitors’ success in providing compelling products and services or in attracting and retaining users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers could harm our financial condition and operating results.
Our ongoing investment in new businesses, products, services, and technologies is inherently risky, and could divert management attention and harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We have invested and expect to continue to invest in new businesses, products, services, and technologies in a wide range of industries beyond online advertising. The investments that we are making across our businesses, such as building AI capabilities into new and existing products and services, reflect our ongoing efforts to innovate and provide products and services that are helpful to users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. Our investments ultimately may not be commercially viable or may not result in an adequate return of capital and, in pursuing new strategies, we may incur unanticipated liabilities. Innovations in our products and services could also result in changes to user behavior and affect our revenue trends. These endeavors involve significant risks and uncertainties, including diversion of resources and management attention from current operations, different monetization models, and the use of alternative investment, governance, or compensation structures that may fail to adequately align incentives across the company or otherwise accomplish their objectives.Within Google Services, we continue to invest heavily in devices, including our smartphones, home devices, and wearables, which is a highly competitive market with frequent introduction of new products and services, rapid adoption of technological advancements by competitors, increased market saturation in developed countries, short product life cycles, evolving industry standards, continual improvement in performance characteristics, and price and feature sensitivity on the part of consumers and businesses. There can be no assurance we will be able to provide devices that compete effectively.Within Google Cloud, we devote significant resources to develop and deploy our enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, and we are advancing our AI platforms and models to support these tools and technologies. We are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services, invest in cybersecurity, and hire talent, particularly to support and scale our sales force. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services. Pricing and delivery models are competitive and constantly evolving, and we may not attain sufficient scale and profitability to achieve our business objectives. Further, our business with public sector customers may present additional risks, including regulatory compliance risks. For instance, we may be subject to government audits and cost reviews, and any failure to comply or any deficiencies found may expose us to legal, financial, and/or reputational risks. Evolving laws and regulations may require us to make new capital investments, build new products, and seek partners to deliver localized services in other countries, and we may not be able to meet sovereign operating requirements.
Within Other Bets, we are investing significantly in the areas of health, life sciences, and transportation, among others. These investment areas face intense competition from large, experienced, and well-funded competitors, and our offerings, many of which involve the development of new and emerging technologies, may not be successful, or be able to compete effectively or operate at sufficient levels of profitability.In addition, new and evolving products and services, including those that use AI, raise ethical, technological, legal, regulatory, and other challenges, which may negatively affect our brands and demand for our products and services. Because all of these investment areas are inherently risky, no assurance can be given that such strategies and offerings will be successful or will not harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Our revenue growth rate could decline over time, and we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.Our revenue growth rate could decline over time as a result of a number of factors, including changes in the devices and modalities used to access our products and services; changes in geographic mix; deceleration or declines in advertiser spending; competition; customer usage and demand for our products; decreases in our pricing of our products and services; ongoing product and policy changes; and shifts to lower priced products and services.
In addition, we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin resulting from a variety of factors, such as an increase in the mix of lower-margin products and services, in particular from the continued expansion of our business into new fields, including products and services such as our devices, Google Cloud, and consumer subscription products, as well as significant investments in Other Bets, all of which may have margins lower than those we generate from advertising. In particular, margins on our devices have had, and may continue to have, an adverse effect on our consolidated margins due to pressures on pricing and higher cost of sales. We may also experience12.
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Alphabet Inc.downward pressure on our operating margins from increasing regulations, increasing competition, and increasing costs for many aspects of our business. Further, certain of our costs and expenses are generally less variable in nature and may not correlate to changes in revenue. We may also not be able to execute our efforts to re-engineer our cost base successfully or in a timely manner. Due to these factors and the evolving nature of our business, our historical revenue growth rate and historical operating margin may not be indicative of our future performance. For additional information, see Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect and Revenues and Monetization Metrics in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and any inability to protect them could reduce the value of our products, services, and brands as well as affect our ability to compete.
Our patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights are important assets for us. Various events outside of our control pose a threat to our intellectual property rights, as well as to our products, services, and technologies. For example, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are distributed or made available through the Internet. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be sufficient or effective. Although we seek to obtain patent protection for our innovations, it is possible we may not be able to protect some of these innovations. Moreover, we may not have adequate patent or copyright protection for certain innovations that later turn out to be important. There is always the possibility that the scope of the protection gained will be insufficient or that an issued patent may be deemed invalid or unenforceable.
We also seek to maintain certain intellectual property as trade secrets. The secrecy of such trade secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised, which could cause us to lose the competitive advantage resulting from these trade secrets. We also face risks associated with our trademarks. For example, there is a risk that the word “Google” could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word “search.” Some courts have ruled that "Google" is a protectable trademark, but it is possible that other courts, particularly those outside of the U.S., may reach a different determination. If this happens, we could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word “Google” to refer to their own products, thus diminishing our brand.
Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business and our ability to compete. Also, protecting our intellectual property rights is costly and time consuming. Any increase in the unauthorized use of our intellectual property could make it more expensive to do business and harm our financial condition and operating results.
Our business depends on strong brands, and failing to maintain and enhance our brands would hurt our ability to expand our base of users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners.
Our strong brands have significantly contributed to the success of our business. Maintaining and enhancing the brands within Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets increases our ability to enter new categories and launch new and innovative products and services that better serve the needs of our users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners. Our brands have been, and may in the future be, negatively affected by a number of factors, including, among others, reputational issues, third-party content shared on our platforms, data privacy and security issues and developments, and product or technical performance failures. For example, if we fail to respond appropriately to the sharing of misinformation or objectionable content on our services and/or products or objectionable practices by advertisers, or otherwise to adequately address user concerns, our users may lose confidence in our brands.
Furthermore, failure to maintain and enhance our brands could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our success will depend largely on our ability to remain a technology leader and continue to provide high-quality, trustworthy, innovative products and services that are truly useful and play a valuable role in a range of settings.
We face a number of manufacturing and supply chain risks that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We face a number of risks related to manufacturing and supply chain management, which could affect our ability to supply both our products and our services.We rely on contract manufacturers to manufacture or assemble our devices and servers and networking equipment used in our technical infrastructure, and we may supply the contract manufacturers with components to assemble the devices and equipment. We also rely on other companies to participate in the supply of components and distribution of our products and services. Our business could be negatively affected if we are not able to engage these companies with the necessary capabilities or capacity on reasonable terms, or if those we engage fail to meet their13.
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Alphabet Inc.obligations (whether due to financial difficulties or other reasons), or make adverse changes in the pricing or other material terms of our arrangements with them.
We have experienced and/or may in the future experience supply shortages, price increases, quality issues, and/or longer lead times that could negatively affect our operations, driven by raw material, component availability, manufacturing capacity, labor shortages, industry allocations, logistics capacity, inflation, foreign currency exchange rates, tariffs, sanctions and export controls, trade disputes and barriers, forced labor concerns, sustainability sourcing requirements, geopolitical tensions, armed conflicts, natural disasters or pandemics, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power loss, and significant changes in the financial or business condition of our suppliers. Some of the components we use in our technical infrastructure and our devices are available from only one or limited sources, and we may not be able to find replacement vendors on favorable terms in the event of a supply chain disruption. A significant supply interruption that affects us or our vendors could delay critical data center upgrades or expansions and delay consumer product availability.
We may enter into long-term contracts for materials and products that commit us to significant terms and conditions. We may face costs for materials and products that are not consumed due to market demand, technological change, changed consumer preferences, quality, product recalls, and warranty issues. For instance, because certain of our hardware supply contracts have volume-based pricing or minimum purchase requirements, if the volume of sales of our devices decreases or does not reach projected targets, we could face increased materials and manufacturing costs or other financial liabilities that could make our products more costly per unit to manufacture and harm our financial condition and operating results. Furthermore, certain of our competitors may negotiate more favorable contractual terms based on volume and other commitments that may provide them with competitive advantages and may affect our supply.
Our devices have had, and in the future may have, quality issues resulting from design, manufacturing, or operations. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by components we purchase from other manufacturers or suppliers. If the quality of our products and services does not meet expectations or our products or services are defective or require a recall, it could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.We require our suppliers and business partners to comply with laws and, where applicable, our company policies and practices, such as the Google Supplier Code of Conduct, regarding workplace and employment practices, data security, environmental compliance, and intellectual property licensing, but we do not control them or their practices. Violations of law or unethical business practices could result in supply chain disruptions, canceled orders, harm to key relationships, and damage to our reputation. Their failure to procure necessary license rights to intellectual property could affect our ability to sell our products or services and expose us to litigation or financial claims.
Interruption to, interference with, or failure of our complex information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer contracts depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Our systems are vulnerable to damage, interference, or interruption from modifications or upgrades, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored attacks, natural disasters or pandemics, geopolitical tensions or armed conflicts, export controls and sanctions, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power loss, utility outages, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, software bugs, ransomware attacks, supply-chain attacks, computer denial of service attacks, phishing schemes, or other attempts to harm or access our systems. Some of our data centers are located in areas with a high risk of major earthquakes or other natural disasters. Our data centers are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, and intentional acts of vandalism, and, in some cases, to potential disruptions resulting from problems experienced by facility operators or disruptions as a result of geopolitical tensions and conflicts happening in the area. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of a natural disaster or pandemic, closure of a facility, or other unanticipated problems affecting our data centers could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. In addition, our products and services are highly technical and complex and have contained in the past, and may contain in the future, errors or vulnerabilities, which could result in interruptions in or failure of our services or systems. Any of these incidents could impede or prevent us from effectively offering products and providing services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Our international operations expose us to additional risks that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.14.
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Alphabet Inc.Our international operations are significant to our revenues and net income, and we plan to continue to grow internationally. International revenues accounted for approximately 53% of our consolidated revenues in 2023. In addition to risks described elsewhere in this section, our international operations expose us to other risks, including the following:• restrictions on foreign ownership and investments, and stringent foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned in countries outside the U.S.;
• sanctions, import and export controls, other market access barriers, political unrest, geopolitical tensions, changes in regimes, or armed conflict (such as ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine), any of which may affect our business continuity, increase our operating costs, limit demand for our products and services, limit our ability to source components or final products, or prevent or impede us from operating in certain jurisdictions, complying with local laws, or offering products or services;
• longer payment cycles in some countries, increased credit risk, and higher levels of payment fraud;• an evolving foreign policy landscape that may adversely affect our revenues and could subject us to litigation, new regulatory costs and challenges (including new customer requirements), uncertainty regarding regulatory outcomes, and other liabilities under local laws that may not offer due process or clear legal precedent;• anti-corruption laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and other local laws prohibiting certain payments to government officials, violations of which could result in civil and criminal penalties; and• different employee/employer relationships, existence of works councils and differing labor practices, and other challenges caused by distance, language, local expertise, and cultural differences, increasing the complexity of doing business in multiple jurisdictions.Because we conduct business in currencies other than U.S. dollars but report our financial results in U.S. dollars, we have faced, and will continue to face, exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. Although we hedge a portion of our international currency exposure, significant fluctuations in exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies have in the past and may in the future adversely affect our revenues and earnings. Hedging programs are also inherently risky and could expose us to additional risks that could harm our financial condition and operating results.
We are exposed to fluctuations in the fair values of our investments and, in some instances, our financial statements incorporate inherently subjective valuation methodologies.The fair value of our debt and equity investments may in the future be, and certain investments have been in the past, negatively affected by liquidity, credit deterioration or losses, performance and financial results of the underlying entities, foreign exchange rates, changes in interest rates, including changes that may result from the implementation of new benchmark rates, the effect of new or changing regulations, the stock market in general, or other factors.
We measure certain of our non-marketable equity and debt securities, certain other instruments including stock-based compensation awards settled in the stock of Other Bet companies, and certain assets and liabilities acquired in a business combination, at fair value on a nonrecurring basis, which is inherently subjective and requires management judgment and estimation. All gains and losses on non-marketable equity securities are recognized in OI&E, which increases the volatility of our OI&E. The unrealized gains and losses or impairments we record from fair value remeasurements in any particular period may differ significantly from the gains or losses we ultimately realize on such investments.As a result of these factors, the value of our investments could decline, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.
Risks Related to our Industry
People access our products and services through a variety of platforms and devices that continue to evolve with the advancement of technology and user preferences. If manufacturers and users do not widely adopt versions of our products and services developed for these interfaces, our business could be harmed.People access our products and services through a growing variety of devices such as desktop computers, mobile phones, smartphones, laptops and tablets, video game consoles, voice-activated speakers, wearables (including virtual reality and augmented reality devices), automobiles, and television-streaming devices. Our products and services may be less popular on some interfaces. Each manufacturer or distributor may establish unique technical standards for its devices, and our products and services may not be available or may only be available with limited functionality for our users or our advertisers on these devices as a result. Some manufacturers may also elect not to include our products on their devices. In addition, search queries may be undertaken via voice-activated search, apps,15.
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Alphabet Inc.social media or other platforms, which could harm our business. It is hard to predict the challenges we may encounter in adapting our products and services and developing competitive new products and services. We expect to continue to devote significant resources to creating and supporting products and services across multiple platforms and devices. Failing to attract and retain a substantial number of new device manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, developers, and users, or failing to develop products and technologies that work well on new devices and platforms, could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results and ability to capture future business opportunities.Issues in the development and use of AI may result in reputational harm and increased liability exposure.Our evolving AI-related efforts may give rise to risks related to harmful content, inaccuracies, discrimination, intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, defamation, data privacy, cybersecurity, and other issues. As a result of these and other challenges associated with innovative technologies, our implementation of AI systems could subject us to competitive harm, regulatory action, legal liability (including under new and proposed legislation and regulations), new applications of existing data protection, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws, and brand or reputational harm.Some uses of AI will present ethical issues and may have broad effects on society. In order to implement AI responsibly and minimize unintended harmful effects, we have already devoted and will continue to invest significant resources to develop, test, and maintain our products and services, but we may not be able to identify or resolve all AI-related issues, deficiencies, and/or failures before they arise. Unintended consequences, uses, or customization of our AI tools and systems may negatively affect human rights, privacy, employment, or other social concerns, which may result in claims, lawsuits, brand or reputational harm, and increased regulatory scrutiny, any of which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Data privacy and security concerns relating to our technology and our practices could harm our reputation, cause us to incur significant liability, and deter current and potential users or customers from using our products and services. Computer viruses, software bugs or defects, security breaches, and attacks on our systems could result in the improper disclosure and use of user data and interference with our users’ and customers’ ability to use our products and services, harming our business and reputation.
Concerns about, including the adequacy of, our practices with regard to the collection, use, governance, disclosure, or security of personal data or other data-privacy-related matters, even if unfounded, could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our policies and practices may change over time as expectations and regulations regarding privacy and data change.Our products and services involve the storage, handling, and transmission of proprietary and other sensitive information. Software bugs, theft, misuse, defects, vulnerabilities in our products and services, and security breaches expose us to a risk of loss or improper use and disclosure of such information, which could result in litigation and other potential liabilities, including regulatory fines and penalties, as well as reputational harm. Additionally, our products incorporate highly technical and complex technologies, and thus our technologies and software have contained, and are likely in the future to contain, undetected errors, bugs, and/or vulnerabilities. We continue to add new features involving AI to our offerings and internal systems, and features that rely on AI may be susceptible to unanticipated security threats as our and the market’s understanding of AI-centric security risks and protection methods continue to develop. We have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, some errors in our software code only after we have released the code. Systems and control failures, security breaches, failure to comply with our privacy policies, and/or inadvertent disclosure of user data could result in government and legal exposure, seriously harm our reputation, brand, and business, and impair our ability to attract and retain users or customers. Such incidents have occurred in the past and may continue to occur due to the scale and nature of our products and services. While there is no guarantee that such incidents will not cause significant damage, we expect to continue to expend significant resources to maintain security protections that limit the effect of bugs, theft, misuse, and security vulnerabilities or breaches.
We experience cyber attacks and other attempts to gain unauthorized access to our systems on a regular basis. Cyber attacks continue to evolve in sophistication and volume, and inherently may be difficult to detect for long periods of time. We have seen, and will continue to see, industry-wide software supply chain vulnerabilities, which could affect our or other parties’ systems. We expect to continue to experience such incidents or vulnerabilities in the future. Our efforts to address undesirable activity on our platform may also increase the risk of retaliatory attack. In addition, we face the risk of cyber attacks by nation-states and state-sponsored actors. These attacks may target us or our customers, particularly our public sector customers (including federal, state, and local governments). Geopolitical tensions or armed conflicts, such as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, may increase these risks.
We may experience security issues, whether due to employee or insider error or malfeasance, system errors, or vulnerabilities in our or other parties’ systems. While we may not determine some of these issues to be material at the16.
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Alphabet Inc.time they occur and may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries, enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity. There is also no guarantee that a series of related issues may not be determined to be material at a later date in the aggregate, even if they may not be material individually at the time of their occurrence. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, disable or degrade service provided by or otherwise sabotage systems change frequently and often are recognized only after being launched against a target, even taking all reasonable precautions, including those required by law, we have been unable in the past and may continue to be unable to anticipate or detect attacks or vulnerabilities or implement adequate preventative measures.Further, if any partners with whom we share user or other customer information fail to implement adequate data-security practices, fail to comply with our terms and policies, or otherwise suffer a network or other security breach, our users’ data may be improperly accessed, used, or disclosed. If an actual or perceived breach of our or our business partners’ or service providers’ security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures would be harmed, we could lose users and customers, our trade secrets or those of our business partners may be compromised, and we may be exposed to significant legal and financial risks, including legal claims (which may include class-action litigation) and regulatory actions, fines, and penalties. Any of the foregoing consequences could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
While we have dedicated significant resources to privacy and security incident response capabilities, including dedicated worldwide incident response teams, our response process, particularly during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not be fast enough to prevent or limit harm, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident. As a result, we may suffer significant legal, reputational, or financial exposure, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
For additional information, see also our risk factor on privacy and data protection regulations under ‘Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies’ below.
Our ongoing investments in safety, security, and content review will likely continue to identify abuse of our platforms and misuse of user data.
In addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate cyber attacks, we are making significant investments in safety, security, and review efforts to combat misuse of our services and unauthorized access to user data by third parties, including investigation and review of platform applications that could access the information of users of our services. As a result of these efforts, we have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, incidents of unnecessary access to or misuse of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties. However, we may not have discovered, and may in the future not discover, all such incidents or activity, whether as a result of our data limitations, including our lack of visibility over our encrypted services, the scale of activity on our platform, or other factors, including factors outside of our control such as a natural disaster or pandemic, and we may learn of such incidents or activity via third parties. Such incidents and activities may include the use of user data or our systems in a manner inconsistent with our terms, contracts or policies, the existence of false or undesirable user accounts, election interference, improper ad purchases, activities that threaten people’s safety on- or off-line, or instances of spamming, scraping, or spreading disinformation. While we may not determine some of these incidents to be material at the time they occurred and we may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries and enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity. There is also no guarantee that a series of related issues may not be determined to be material at a later date in the aggregate, even if they may not be material individually at the time of their occurrence.
We may also be unsuccessful in our efforts to enforce our policies or otherwise prevent or remediate any such incidents. Any of the foregoing developments may negatively affect user trust and engagement, harm our reputation and brands, require us to change our business practices in ways that harm our business operations, and adversely affect our business and financial results. Any such developments may also subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries, which could result in monetary penalties and damages, divert management’s time and attention, and lead to enhanced regulatory oversight.Problematic content on our platforms, including low-quality user-generated content, web spam, content farms, and other violations of our guidelines could affect the quality of our services, which could harm our reputation and deter our current and potential users from using our products and services.
We, like others in the industry, face violations of our content guidelines across our platforms, including sophisticated attempts by bad actors to manipulate our hosting and advertising systems to fraudulently generate revenues, or to otherwise generate traffic that does not represent genuine user interest or intent. While we invest significantly in efforts to promote high-quality and relevant results and to detect and prevent low-quality content and invalid traffic, we have been unable and may continue to be unable to detect and prevent all such abuses or promote17.
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Alphabet Inc.uniformly high-quality content. Increased use of AI in our offerings and internal systems may create new avenues of abuse for bad actors.
Many websites violate or attempt to violate our guidelines, including by seeking to inappropriately rank higher in search results than our search engine's assessment of their relevance and utility would rank them. Such efforts have affected, and may continue to affect, the quality of content on our platforms and lead them to display false, misleading, or undesirable content. Although English-language web spam in our search results has been reduced, and web spam in most other languages is limited, we expect web spammers will continue to seek inappropriate ways to improve their rankings. Although we continue to invest in and deploy proprietary technology to detect and prevent web spam on our platforms, there is no guarantee that our technology will always be successful, and our users may have negative experiences on our platforms if our technology fails to work as intended, which may affect our users' decisions in continuing to use our platforms. We also face other challenges from low-quality and irrelevant content websites, including content farms, which are websites that generate large quantities of low-quality content to help them improve their search rankings. We are continually launching algorithmic changes designed to detect and prevent abuse from low-quality websites, but we may not always be successful. We also face other challenges on our platforms, including violations of our content guidelines involving incidents such as attempted election interference, activities that threaten the safety and/or well-being of our users on- or off-line, and the spreading of misinformation or disinformation.If we fail to either detect and prevent an increase in problematic content or effectively promote high-quality content, it could hurt our reputation for delivering relevant information or reduce use of our platforms, harming our financial condition and operating results. It may also subject us to litigation and regulatory actions, which could result in monetary penalties and damages and divert management’s time and attention.
Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users. Internet access providers may be able to restrict, block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.Our products and services depend on the ability of our users to access the Internet, and certain of our products require significant bandwidth to work effectively. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant market power in the broadband and internet access marketplace, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and government-owned service providers. Some of these providers have taken, or have stated that they may take, measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of user access to certain of our products by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our offerings, by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings, or by providing our competitors preferential access. Some jurisdictions have adopted regulations prohibiting certain forms of discrimination by internet access providers; however, substantial uncertainty exists in the U.S. and elsewhere regarding such protections. For example, in 2018 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules, which could permit internet access providers to restrict, block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services. In addition, in some jurisdictions, our products and services have been subject to government-initiated restrictions or blockages. These could harm existing key relationships, including with our users, customers, advertisers, and/or content providers, and impair our ability to attract new ones; harm our reputation; and increase costs, thereby negatively affecting our business.Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies
We are subject to a variety of new, existing, and changing laws and regulations worldwide that could harm our business, and will likely be subject to an even broader scope of laws and regulations as we continue to expand our business.We are subject to numerous U.S. and foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subjects, and our introduction of new businesses, products, services, and technologies will likely continue to subject us to additional laws and regulations. In recent years, governments around the world have proposed and adopted a large number of new laws and regulations relevant to the digital economy, particularly in the areas of data privacy and security, competition, environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements, AI, and online content. The costs of compliance with these measures are high and are likely to increase in the future.
New or changing laws and regulations, or new interpretations or applications of existing laws and regulations in a manner inconsistent with our practices, have resulted in, and may continue to result in, less useful products and services, altered business practices, limited ability to pursue certain business models or offer certain products and services, substantial costs, and civil or criminal liability. Examples include laws and regulations regarding:
• Competition and technology platforms’ business practices: Laws and regulations focused on large technology platforms, including the Digital Markets Act in the European Union (EU); regulations and legal18.
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Alphabet Inc.settlements in the U.S., South Korea, and elsewhere that affect Google Play’s billing policies, fees, and business model; as well as litigation and new regulations under consideration in a range of jurisdictions.
• AI: Laws and regulations focused on the development, use, and provision of AI technologies and other digital products and services, which could result in monetary penalties or other regulatory actions. For example, while legislative text has yet to be finalized and formally approved, provisional political agreement on a proposed EU AI Act was reached between co-legislators in December 2023, including that specific transparency and other requirements would be introduced for general purpose AI systems and the models on which those systems are based. In addition, the White House's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence devises a framework for the U.S. government, among other things, to regulate private sector use and development of certain foundation models.
• Data privacy, collection, and processing: Laws and regulations further restricting the collection, processing, and/or sharing of user or advertising-related data, including privacy and data protection laws; laws affecting the processing of children's data (as discussed further below), data breach notification laws, and laws limiting data transfers (including data localization laws).
• Copyright and other intellectual property : Copyright and related laws, including the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and European Economic Area transpositions, which may introduce new licensing regimes, increase liability with respect to content uploaded by users or linked to from our platforms, or create property rights in news publications that could require payments to news agencies and publishers, which may result in other regulatory actions.
• Content moderation : Various laws covering content moderation and removal, and related disclosure obligations, such as the EU's Digital Services Act, Florida’s Senate Bill 7072 and Texas’ House Bill 20, and laws and proposed legislation in Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom that impose penalties for failure to remove certain types of content or require disclosure of information about the operation of our services and algorithms, which may make it harder for services like Google Search and YouTube to detect and deal with low-quality, deceptive, or harmful content.
• Consumer protection : Consumer protection laws, including the EU’s New Deal for Consumers, which could result in monetary penalties and create a range of new compliance obligations.
In addition, the applicability and scope of these and other laws and regulations, as interpreted by courts, regulators, or administrative bodies, remain uncertain and could be interpreted in ways that harm our business. For example, we rely on statutory safe harbors, like those set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S. and the E-Commerce Directive in Europe, to protect against liability for various linking, caching, ranking, recommending, and hosting activities. Legislation or court rulings affecting these safe harbors may adversely affect us and may impose significant operational challenges. There are legislative proposals and pending litigation in the U.S., EU, and around the world that could diminish or eliminate safe harbor protection for websites and online platforms. Our development, use, and commercialization of AI products and services (including our implementation of AI in our offerings and internal systems) could subject us to regulatory action and legal liability, including under specific legislation regulating AI, as well as new applications of existing data protection, cybersecurity, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws.
We are and may continue to be subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government investigations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and other forms of regulatory scrutiny and legal liability that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
We are subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government investigations, other proceedings, and orders involving competition, intellectual property, data privacy and security, tax and related compliance, labor and employment, commercial disputes, content generated by our users, goods and services offered by advertisers or publishers using our platforms, personal injury, and other matters. We are also subject to a variety of claims including product warranty, product liability, and consumer protection claims related to product defects, among other litigation, and we may also be subject to claims involving health and safety, hazardous materials usage, other environmental effects, AI training, development, and commercialization, or service disruptions or failures. Claims have been brought, and we expect will continue to be brought, against us for defamation, negligence, breaches of contract, copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, unlawful activity, torts, privacy rights violations, fraud, or other legal theories based on the nature and content of information available on or via our services, the design and effect of our products and services, or due to our involvement in hosting, transmitting, marketing, branding, or providing access to content created by third parties.19.
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Alphabet Inc.For example, in December 2023, a California jury delivered a verdict in Epic Games v. Google finding that Google violated antitrust laws related to Google Play's billing practices. The presiding judge will determine remedies in 2024 and the range of potential remedies vary widely. We plan to appeal. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice, various U.S. states, and other plaintiffs have filed several antitrust lawsuits about various aspects of our business, including our advertising technologies and practices, the operation and distribution of Google Search, and the operation and distribution of the Android operating system and Play Store. Other regulatory agencies in the U.S. and around the world, including competition enforcers, consumer protection agencies, and data protection authorities, have challenged and may continue to challenge our business practices and compliance with laws and regulations. We are cooperating with these investigations and defending litigation or appealing decisions where appropriate.
Various laws, regulations, investigations, enforcement lawsuits, and regulatory actions have involved in the past, and may in the future result in substantial fines and penalties, injunctive relief, ongoing monitoring and auditing obligations, changes to our products and services, alterations to our business models and operations, including divestiture, and collateral related civil litigation or other adverse consequences, all of which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Any of these legal proceedings could result in legal costs, diversion of management resources, negative publicity and other harms to our business. Estimating liabilities for our pending proceedings is a complex, fact-specific, and speculative process that requires significant judgment, and the amounts we are ultimately liable for may be less than or exceed our estimates. The resolution of one or more such proceedings has resulted in, and may in the future result in, additional substantial fines, penalties, injunctions, and other sanctions that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
For additional information about the ongoing material legal proceedings to which we are subject, see Legal Proceedings in Part I, Item 3 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Privacy, data protection, and data usage regulations are complex and rapidly evolving areas. Any failure or alleged failure to comply with these laws could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Authorities around the world have adopted and are considering a number of legislative and regulatory proposals concerning data protection, data usage, and encryption of user data. Adverse legal rulings, legislation, or regulation have resulted in, and may continue to result in, fines and orders requiring that we change our practices, which have had and could continue to have an adverse effect on how we provide services, harming our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. These laws and regulations are evolving and subject to interpretation, and compliance obligations could cause us to incur substantial costs or harm the quality and operations of our products and services in ways that harm our business. Examples of these laws include:
• The General Data Protection Regulation and the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulations, which apply to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or the United Kingdom, respectively, or related to products and services that we offer to EU or the United Kingdom users or customers, respectively, or the monitoring of their behavior in the EU or the UK, respectively.
• Various comprehensive U.S. state and foreign privacy laws, which give new data privacy rights to their respective residents (including, in California, a private right of action in the event of a data breach resulting from our failure to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices) and impose significant obligations on controllers and processors of consumer data.
• State laws governing the processing of biometric information, such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act and the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, which impose obligations on businesses that collect or disclose consumer biometric information.
• Various federal, state, and foreign laws governing how companies provide age appropriate experiences to children and minors, including the collection and processing of children and minor’s data. These include the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, and the United Kingdom Age-Appropriate Design Code, all of which address the use and disclosure of the personal data of children and minors and impose obligations on online services or products directed to or likely to be accessed by children.
• The California Internet of Things Security Law, which regulates the security of data used in connection with internet-connected devices.
• The EU’s Digital Markets Act, which will require in-scope companies to obtain user consent for combining data across certain products and require search engines to share anonymized data with rival companies, among other changes.20.
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Alphabet Inc.Further, we are subject to evolving laws and regulations that dictate whether, how, and under what circumstances we can transfer, process and/or receive personal data, as well as ongoing enforcement actions from supervisory authorities related to cross-border transfers of personal data. The validity of various data transfer mechanisms we currently rely upon remains subject to legal, regulatory, and political developments in both Europe and the U.S., which may require us to adapt our existing arrangements.
We face, and may continue to face, intellectual property and other claims that could be costly to defend, result in significant damage awards or other costs (including indemnification awards), and limit our ability to use certain technologies.
We, like other internet, technology, and media companies, are frequently subject to litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights, including patent, copyright, trade secrets, and trademarks. Parties have also sought broad injunctive relief against us by filing claims in U.S. and international courts and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) for exclusion and cease-and-desist orders. In addition, patent-holding companies may frequently seek to generate income from patents they have obtained by bringing claims against us. As we continue to expand our business, the number of intellectual property claims against us has increased and may continue to increase as we develop and acquire new products, services, and technologies.Adverse results in any of these lawsuits may include awards of monetary damages, costly royalty or licensing agreements (if licenses are available at all), or orders limiting our ability to sell our products and services in the U.S. or elsewhere, including by preventing us from offering certain features, functionalities, products, or services in certain jurisdictions. They may also cause us to change our business practices in ways that could result in a loss of revenues for us and otherwise harm our business.
Many of our agreements with our customers and partners, including certain suppliers, require us to defend against certain intellectual property infringement claims and in some cases indemnify them for certain intellectual property infringement claims against them, which could result in increased costs for defending such claims or significant damages if there were an adverse ruling in any such claims. Such customers and partners may also discontinue the use of our products, services, and technologies, as a result of injunctions or otherwise, which could result in loss of revenues and harm our business. Moreover, intellectual property indemnities provided to us by our suppliers, when obtainable, may not cover all damages and losses suffered by us and our customers arising from intellectual property infringement claims. Furthermore, in connection with our divestitures, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, including those associated with intellectual property claims. Regardless of their merits, intellectual property claims are often time consuming and expensive to litigate or settle. To the extent such claims are successful, they could harm our business, including our product and service offerings, financial condition, and operating results.Expectations relating to ESG considerations could expose us to potential liabilities, increased costs, and reputational harm.
We are subject to laws, regulations, and other measures that govern a wide range of topics, including those related to matters beyond our core products and services. For instance, new laws, regulations, policies, and international accords relating to ESG matters, including sustainability, climate change, human capital, and diversity, are being developed and formalized in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere, which may entail specific, target-driven frameworks and/or disclosure requirements. We have implemented robust ESG programs, adopted reporting frameworks and principles, and announced a number of goals and initiatives. The implementation of these goals and initiatives may require considerable investments, and our goals, with all of their contingencies, dependencies, and in certain cases, reliance on third-party verification and/or performance, are complex and ambitious, and may change. We cannot guarantee that our goals and initiatives will be fully realized on the timelines we expect or at all, and projects that are completed as planned may not achieve the results we anticipate. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to adhere to our public statements, comply fully with developing interpretations of ESG laws and regulations, or meet evolving and varied stakeholder expectations and standards could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.We could be subject to changes in tax rates, the adoption of new U.S. or international tax legislation, or exposure to additional tax liabilities.We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the U.S. and numerous foreign jurisdictions. Our effective tax rates are affected by a variety of factors, including changes in the mix of earnings in jurisdictions with different statutory tax rates, net gains and losses on hedges and related transactions under our foreign exchange risk management program, changes in our stock price for shares issued as employee compensation, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets or liabilities, and the application of different provisions of tax laws or changes in tax laws, regulations, or accounting principles (including changes in the interpretation of existing laws). Further, if we are
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Alphabet Inc.unable or fail to collect taxes on behalf of customers, employees and partners as the withholding agent, we could become liable for taxes that are levied against third parties.
We are subject to regular review and audit by both domestic and foreign tax authorities. As a result, we have received, and may in the future receive, assessments in multiple jurisdictions, on various tax-related assertions, such as transfer-pricing adjustments or permanent-establishment claims. Any adverse outcome of such a review or audit could harm our financial condition and operating results, require adverse changes to our business practices, or subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries. In addition, the determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment and often involves uncertainty. Although we believe our estimates are reasonable, the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and may affect our financial results in the period or periods for which such determination is made.
Furthermore, due to shifting economic and political conditions, tax policies, laws, or rates in various jurisdictions may be subject to significant changes in ways that could harm our financial condition and operating results. For example, various jurisdictions around the world have enacted or are considering revenue-based taxes such as digital services taxes and other targeted taxes, which could lead to inconsistent and potentially overlapping international tax regimes. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is coordinating negotiations among more than 140 countries with the goal of achieving consensus around substantial changes to international tax policies, including the implementation of a minimum global effective tax rate of 15%. O ur effective tax rate and cash tax payments could increase in future years as a result of these changes.Risks Related to Ownership of our StockWe cannot guarantee that any share repurchase program will be fully consummated or will enhance long-term stockholder value, and share repurchases could increase the volatility of our stock prices and could diminish our cash reserves.
We engage in share repurchases of our Class A and Class C stock from time to time in accordance with authorizations from the Board of Directors of Alphabet. Our repurchase program does not have an expiration date and does not obligate Alphabet to repurchase any specific dollar amount or to acquire any specific number of shares. Further, our share repurchases could affect our share trading prices, increase their volatility, reduce our cash reserves and may be suspended or terminated at any time, which may result in a decrease in the trading prices of our stock.The concentration of our stock ownership limits our stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters.Our Class B stock has 10 votes per share, our Class A stock has one vote per share, and our Class C stock has no voting rights. As of December 31, 2023, Larry Page and Sergey Brin beneficially owned approximately 86.5% of our outstanding Class B stock, which represented approximately 51.5% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. Through their stock ownership, Larry and Sergey have significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets, for the foreseeable future. In addition, because our Class C stock carries no voting rights (except as required by applicable law), the issuance of the Class C stock, including in future stock-based acquisition transactions and to fund employee equity incentive programs, could continue Larry and Sergey’s current relative voting power and their ability to elect all of our directors and to determine the outcome of most matters submitted to a vote of our stockholders. The share repurchases made pursuant to our repurchase program may also affect Larry and Sergey’s relative voting power. This concentrated control limits or severely restricts other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and we may take actions that some of our stockholders do not view as beneficial, which could reduce the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock.Provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could discourage a takeover that stockholders may consider favorable.
Provisions in Alphabet’s certificate of incorporation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. These provisions include the following:
• Our Board of Directors has the right to elect directors to fill a vacancy created by the expansion of the Board of Directors or the resignation, death, or removal of a director.
• Our stockholders may not act by written consent, which makes it difficult to take certain actions without holding a stockholders' meeting.
• Our certificate of incorporation prohibits cumulative voting in the election of directors. This limits the ability of minority stockholders to elect director candidates.22.Table of Contents
Alphabet Inc.• Stockholders must provide advance notice to nominate individuals for election to the Board of Directors or to propose matters that can be acted upon at a stockholders’ meeting. These provisions may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer's own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our company.• Our Board of Directors may issue, without stockholder approval, shares of undesignated preferred stock, which makes it possible for our Board of Directors to issue preferred stock with voting or other rights or preferences that could impede the success of any attempt to acquire us.
As a Delaware corporation, we are also subject to certain Delaware anti-takeover provisions. Under Delaware law, a corporation may not engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its outstanding voting stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or, among other things, the Board of Directors has approved the transaction. Our Board of Directors could rely on Delaware law to prevent or delay an acquisition of us.
The trading price for our Class A stock and non-voting Class C stock may continue to be volatile.The trading price of our stock has at times experienced significant volatility and may continue to be volatile. In addition to the factors discussed in this report, the trading prices of our Class A stock and Class C stock have fluctuated, and may continue to fluctuate widely, in response to various factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, among others, the activities of our peers and changes in broader economic and political conditions around the world. These broad market and industry factors could harm the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock, regardless of our actual operating performance.General Risks
Our operating results may fluctuate, which makes our results difficult to predict and could cause our results to fall short of expectations.
Our operating results have fluctuated, and may in the future fluctuate, as a result of a number of factors, many outside of our control, including the cyclical nature and seasonality in our business and geopolitical events. As a result, comparing our operating results (including our expenses as a percentage of our revenues) on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful, and our past results should not be relied on as an indication of our future performance. Consequently, our operating results in future quarters may fall below expectations.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures could result in operating difficulties, dilution, and other consequences that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures are important elements of our overall corporate strategy and use of capital, and these transactions could be material to our financial condition and operating results. We expect to continue to evaluate and enter into discussions regarding a wide array of such potential strategic arrangements, which could create unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. Some of the areas where we face risks include:
• diversion of management time and focus from operating our business to challenges related to acquisitions and other strategic arrangements;• failure to obtain required approvals on a timely basis, if at all, from governmental authorities, or conditions placed upon approval that could, among other things, delay or prevent us from completing a transaction, or otherwise restrict our ability to realize the expected financial or strategic goals of a transaction;• failure to successfully integrate the acquired operations, technologies, services, and personnel (including cultural integration and retention of employees) and further develop the acquired business or technology;
• implementation of controls (or remediation of control deficiencies), procedures, and policies at the acquired company;
• integration of the acquired company’s accounting and other administrative systems, and the coordination of product, engineering, and sales and marketing functions;
• transition of operations, users, and customers onto our existing platforms;
• in the case of foreign acquisitions, the need to integrate operations across different cultures and languages and to address the particular economic, currency, political, and regulatory risks associated with specific countries;
• failure to accomplish commercial, strategic or financial objectives with respect to investments, joint ventures, and other strategic arrangements;
• failure to realize the value of investments and joint ventures due to a lack of liquidity;23.Table of Contents
Alphabet Inc.• liability for activities of the acquired company before the acquisition, including patent and trademark infringement claims, data privacy and security issues, violations of laws, commercial disputes, tax liabilities, warranty claims, product liabilities, and other known and unknown liabilities; and• litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company, including claims from terminated employees, customers, former stockholders, or other third parties.
Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and other strategic arrangements could cause us to fail to realize their anticipated benefits, incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally.Our acquisitions and other strategic arrangements could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, or amortization expenses, or impairment of goodwill and/or purchased long-lived assets, and restructuring charges, any of which could harm our financial condition and operating results. Also, the anticipated benefits or value of our acquisitions and other strategic arrangements may not materialize. In connection with our divestitures, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.We rely on highly skilled personnel and, if we are unable to retain or motivate key personnel, hire qualified personnel, or maintain and continue to adapt our corporate culture, we may not be able to grow or operate effectively.
Our performance and future success depends in large part upon the continued service of key technical leads as well as members of our senior management team. For instance, Sundar Pichai is critical to the overall management of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and plays an important role in the development of our technology, maintaining our culture, and setting our strategic direction.Our ability to compete effectively and our future success depend on our continuing to identify, hire, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled personnel for all areas of our organization. Competition in our industry for qualified employees is intense, and certain of our competitors have directly targeted, and may continue to target, our employees. In addition, our compensation arrangements, such as our equity award programs, may not always be successful in attracting new employees and retaining and motivating our existing employees. Restrictive immigration policy and regulatory changes may also affect our ability to hire, mobilize, or retain some of our global talent. All of our executive officers and key employees are at-will employees, and we do not maintain any key-person life insurance policies.In addition, we believe that our corporate culture fosters innovation, creativity, and teamwork. As our organization grows and evolves, we may need to adapt our corporate culture and work environments to ever-changing circumstances, such as during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, and these changes could affect our ability to compete effectively or have an adverse effect on our corporate culture. Under our hybrid work models, we may experience increased costs and/or disruption, in addition to potential effects on our ability to operate effectively and maintain our corporate culture.
FY 2024-12-31 (later)
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described below, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results, and affect the trading price of our Class A and Class C stock.
Risks Specific to our CompanyWe generate a significant portion of our revenues from advertising. Reduced spending by advertisers, a loss of partners, or new and existing technologies that block ads online and/or affect our ability to personalize ads could harm our business.
We generated more than 75% of total revenues from online advertising in 2024. Many of our advertisers, companies that distribute our products and services, digital publishers, and content providers can terminate their contracts with us at any time. These partners may not continue to do business with us if we do not create more value (such as increased numbers of users or customers, new sales leads, increased brand awareness, or more effective
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monetization) than their available alternatives. Changes to our advertising policies and data privacy practices, such as our initiatives related to third-party cookies, including our announcement in July 2024 to move from phasing out all third-party cookies to a proposed user choice model (which remains subject to continuing discussions with regulators), as well as changes to other companies’ advertising and/or data privacy practices have in the past, and may in the future, affect the advertising services that we are able to provide. In addition, technologies have been developed that make personalized ads more difficult, or that block the display of ads altogether, and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the availability and functionality of third-party digital advertising. Failing to provide superior value or deliver advertisements effectively and competitively could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.In addition, expenditures by advertisers tend to correlate with overall economic conditions. Adverse macroeconomic conditions have affected, and may in the future affect, the demand for advertising, resulting in fluctuations in the amounts our advertisers spend on advertising, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.
We face intense competition. If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, customers, and other partners, we may not remain competitive, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Our business environment is rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Our businesses face changing technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of rival products and services. To compete successfully, we must accurately anticipate technology developments and deliver innovative, relevant and useful products, services, and technologies in a timely manner. As our businesses evolve, the competitive pressure to innovate will encompass a wider range of products and services. We must continue to invest significant resources in technical infrastructure and R&D, including through acquisitions, in order to enhance our technology, products, and services.We have many competitors in different industries. Our current and potential domestic and international competitors range from large and established companies to emerging start-ups. Some competitors have longer operating histories and well-established relationships in various sectors. They can use their experience and resources in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by making acquisitions and entering into other strategic arrangements; continuing to invest heavily in technical infrastructure, R&D, and in talent; initiating intellectual property and competition claims (whether or not meritorious); and continuing to compete for users, advertisers, customers, and content providers. Further, discrepancies in enforcement of existing laws may enable our lesser known competitors to aggressively interpret those laws without commensurate scrutiny, thereby affording them competitive advantages. Our competitors may also be able to innovate and provide products and services faster or more cost effectively than we can or may foresee the need for products and services before we do.
We are expanding our investment in AI across the entire company. This includes generative AI and continuing to integrate AI capabilities into our products and services. AI technology and services are highly competitive, rapidly evolving, and require significant investment, including technical infrastructure, development and operational costs, to meet the changing needs and expectations of our existing users and attract new users. Our ability to deploy certain AI technologies critical for our products and services and for our business strategy may depend on the availability and pricing of third-party equipment and other technical infrastructure operations costs, including network capacity, energy, and equipment costs. Additionally, other companies may develop AI products and technologies that are similar or superior to our technologies or more cost-effective to develop and/or deploy. Other companies may also have (or in the future may obtain) patents or other proprietary rights that would prevent, limit, or interfere with our ability to make, use, or sell our own AI products and services.
Our financial condition and operating results may also suffer if our products and services are not responsive in a timely manner to the evolving needs and desires of our users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers, or if we miscalculate those needs and desires and invest significantly in areas that fail to gain sufficient market traction. As new and existing technologies continue to develop, competitors and new entrants may be able to offer experiences that are, or that are perceived to be, substantially similar to or better than ours. These technologies could reduce usage of our products and services, and force us to compete in different ways and expend significant resources to develop and operate equal or better products and services. Competitors’ success in providing compelling products and services or in attracting and retaining users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers could harm our financial condition and operating results.
Our ongoing investment in new businesses, products, services, and technologies is inherently risky, and could divert management attention and harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We have invested and expect to continue to invest in new businesses, products, services, and technologies in a wide range of industries beyond online advertising. The investments that we are making across our businesses, such11.
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Alphabet Inc.as building AI capabilities into new and existing products and services, reflect our ongoing efforts to innovate and provide products and services that are helpful to users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. Our investments ultimately may not be commercially viable or may not result in an adequate return of capital and, in pursuing new strategies, we may incur unanticipated liabilities.
We have invested significantly and expect to continue to invest significantly in our property and equipment, including our technical infrastructure, and we expect these assets to benefit our business over their estimated useful lives. Changes in facts and circumstances such as changes to ongoing business operations, changes in the planned use and utilization of assets, and/or technological advancements, could indicate a change in the period over which we expect to benefit from the asset and impact our financial condition and operating results.
Innovations in our products and services could also result in changes to user behavior and affect our revenue trends. These endeavors involve significant risks and uncertainties, including diversion of resources and management attention from current operations, different monetization models, and the use of alternative investment, governance, or compensation structures that may fail to adequately align incentives across the company or otherwise accomplish their objectives.Within Google Services, we continue to invest heavily in devices, including our smartphones, home devices, and wearables, which is a highly competitive market with frequent introduction of new products and services, rapid adoption of technological advancements by competitors, increased market saturation in developed countries, short product life cycles, evolving industry standards, continual improvement in performance characteristics, and price and feature sensitivity on the part of consumers and businesses. There can be no assurance we will be able to provide devices that compete effectively.Within Google Cloud, we devote significant resources to develop and deploy our enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, and we are advancing our AI platforms and models to support these tools and technologies. We are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services, invest in cybersecurity, and hire talent, particularly to support and scale our sales force. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services. Pricing, including platform switching costs, are challenging across the industry, and delivery models are competitive and constantly evolving, and we may therefore not achieve our business objectives. Further, our business with financial services, healthcare, and public sector customers may present additional risks, including regulatory compliance risks. For instance, we may be subject to government audits and cost reviews, and any failure to comply or any deficiencies found may expose us to legal, financial, and/or reputational risks. Evolving laws and regulations may require us to make new capital investments, build new products, and seek partners to deliver localized services in other countries, and we may not be able to meet sovereign operating requirements.
Within Other Bets, we are investing significantly in areas such as health, life sciences, and transportation, among others. These investment areas face intense competition from large, experienced, and well-funded competitors, and our offerings, many of which involve the development of new and emerging technologies, may not be successful, or be able to compete effectively or operate at sufficient levels of profitability.In addition, new and evolving products and services, including those that use AI, raise ethical, technological, legal, regulatory, and other challenges, which may negatively affect our brands and demand for our products and services. Because all of these investment areas are inherently risky, no assurance can be given that such strategies and offerings will be successful or will not harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Our revenue growth rate could decline over time, and we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.Our revenue growth rate could decline over time as a result of a number of factors, including changes in the devices and modalities used to access our products and services; changes in geographic mix; deceleration or declines in advertiser spending; competition; changes in customer usage and demand for our existing products and increasing demand for new technologies; decreases in the pricing of our products and services; ongoing product and policy changes; and shifts to lower priced products and services.
In addition, we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin resulting from a variety of factors, such as an increase in the mix of lower-margin products and services, in particular from the continued expansion of our business into new fields, including products and services such as our devices, Google Cloud, and consumer subscription products, as well as significant investments in Other Bets, all of which may have margins lower than those we generate from advertising. In particular, margins on our devices have had, and may continue to have, an adverse effect on our consolidated margins due to pressures on pricing and higher cost of sales. We may also experience downward pressure on our operating margins from increasing regulations, increasing competition, and increasing costs12.
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Alphabet Inc.for many aspects of our business, including higher level of investment in technical infrastructure. Further, certain of our costs and expenses are generally less variable in nature and may not correlate to changes in revenue. We may also not be able to continue to execute our efficiency efforts successfully or in a timely manner. Due to these factors and the evolving nature of our business, our historical revenue growth rate and historical operating margin may not be indicative of our future performance. For additional information, see Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect and Revenues and Monetization Metrics in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and any inability to protect them could reduce the value of our products, services, and brands as well as affect our ability to compete.
Our patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights are important assets for us. Various events outside of our control pose a threat to our intellectual property rights, as well as to our products, services, and technologies. For example, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are distributed or made available through the Internet. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be sufficient or effective. Although we seek to obtain patent protection for our innovations, it is possible we may not be able to protect some of these innovations. Moreover, we may not have adequate patent or copyright protection for certain innovations that later turn out to be important. There is always the possibility that the scope of the protection gained will be insufficient or that an issued patent may be deemed invalid or unenforceable.
We also seek to maintain certain intellectual property as trade secrets. The secrecy of such trade secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised, which could cause us to lose the competitive advantage resulting from these trade secrets. We also face risks associated with our trademarks. For example, there is a risk that the word “Google” could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word “search.” Some courts have ruled that "Google" is a protectable trademark, but it is possible that other courts, particularly those outside of the U.S., may reach a different determination. If this happens, we could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word “Google” to refer to their own products, thus diminishing our brand.
Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business and our ability to compete. Also, protecting our intellectual property rights is costly and time consuming. Any increase in the unauthorized use of our intellectual property could make it more expensive to do business and harm our financial condition and operating results.
Our business depends on strong brands, and failing to maintain and enhance our brands would hurt our ability to expand our base of users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners.
Our strong brands have significantly contributed to the success of our business. Maintaining and enhancing the brands within Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets increases our ability to enter new categories and launch new and innovative products and services that better serve the needs of our users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners. Our brands have been, and may in the future be, negatively affected by a number of factors, including, among others, reputational issues, third-party content shared on our platforms, data privacy and security issues and developments, and product or technical performance failures. For example, if we fail to respond appropriately to the sharing of misinformation or objectionable content on our services and/or products or objectionable practices by advertisers, or otherwise to adequately address user concerns, our users may lose confidence in our brands.
Furthermore, failure to maintain and enhance our brands could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our success will depend largely on our ability to remain a technology leader and continue to provide high-quality, trustworthy, innovative products and services that are truly useful and play a valuable role in a range of settings.
We face a number of manufacturing and supply chain risks that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We face a number of risks related to manufacturing and supply chain management, which could affect our ability to supply both our products and our services.We rely on contract manufacturers to manufacture or assemble our devices as well as servers and networking equipment used in our technical infrastructure, certain components of which we may supply. We rely on third parties to supply components and distribute our products and services. Our business could be negatively affected if we are not able to engage these companies with the necessary capabilities or capacity on reasonable terms, or if those we engage fail to meet their obligations (whether due to financial difficulties or other reasons), or make adverse changes in the pricing or other material terms of our arrangements with them.13.
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Alphabet Inc.We have experienced and/or may in the future experience supply shortages, price increases, quality issues, and/or longer lead times that could negatively affect our operations, driven by raw material and/or component availability, manufacturing capacity, labor shortages, industry allocations, logistics capacity, inflation, foreign currency exchange rates, tariffs, sanctions and export controls, trade disputes and barriers, forced labor concerns, sustainability sourcing requirements, geopolitical tensions, armed conflicts, natural disasters or pandemics, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power and transmission availability, and significant changes in the financial or business condition of our suppliers. Some of the components we use in our technical infrastructure and our devices are available from only one or limited sources, and we may not be able to find replacement vendors on favorable terms in the event of a supply chain disruption. A significant supply interruption that affects us or our vendors could delay critical data center upgrades or expansions and delay consumer product availability.
We may enter into long-term contracts for materials and products that commit us to significant terms and conditions. We may face costs for materials and products that are not consumed due to market demand, technological change, changed consumer preferences, quality, product recalls, and warranty issues. For instance, because certain of our hardware supply contracts have volume-based pricing or minimum purchase requirements, if the volume of sales of our devices decreases or does not reach projected targets, we could face increased materials and manufacturing costs or other financial liabilities that could make our products more costly per unit to manufacture and harm our financial condition and operating results. Furthermore, certain of our competitors may negotiate more favorable contractual terms based on volume and other commitments that may provide them with competitive advantages and may affect our supply. For example, industry supply capacity for AI accelerators, including Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs, as well as our custom-built TPUs, is highly competitive and rapidly evolving. If we are unable to negotiate favorable contractual terms or our competitors claim the supply or capacity first, we may face supply constraints.
Our devices have had, and in the future may have, quality issues resulting from design, manufacturing, or operations. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by components we purchase from other manufacturers or suppliers. If the quality of our products and services does not meet expectations or our products or services are defective or require a recall, it could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.We require our suppliers and business partners to comply with laws and, where applicable, our company policies and practices, such as the Google Supplier Code of Conduct, regarding workplace and employment practices, data security, environmental compliance, and intellectual property licensing, but we do not control them or their practices. Violations of law or unethical business practices could result in supply chain disruptions, canceled orders, harm to key relationships, and damage to our reputation. Their failure to procure necessary license rights to intellectual property could affect our ability to sell our products or services and expose us to litigation or financial claims.
Interruption to, interference with, or failure of our complex information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer contracts depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Our systems are vulnerable to damage, interference, or interruption from modifications or upgrades, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored attacks, natural disasters or pandemics, geopolitical tensions or armed conflicts, export controls and sanctions, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power and transmission availability challenges, utility outages, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, software bugs, cyber attacks, supply-chain attacks, computer denial of service attacks, phishing schemes, or other attempts to harm or access our systems. Some of our data centers are located in areas with a high risk of major earthquakes or other natural disasters. Our data centers are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, and intentional acts of vandalism, and, in some cases, to potential disruptions resulting from problems experienced by facility operators or disruptions as a result of geopolitical tensions and conflicts happening in the area. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of a natural disaster or pandemic, closure of a facility, or other unanticipated problems affecting our data centers could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. In addition, our products and services are highly technical and complex and have contained in the past, and may contain in the future, errors or vulnerabilities, which could result in interruptions in or failure of our services or systems. Any of these incidents could impede or prevent us from effectively offering products and providing services, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Our international operations expose us to additional risks that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.14.
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Alphabet Inc.Our international operations are significant to our revenues and net income, and we plan to continue to grow internationally. International revenues accounted for approximately 51% of our consolidated revenues in 2024. In addition to risks described elsewhere in this section, our international operations expose us to other risks, including the following:• restrictions on foreign ownership and investments, and stringent foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned in countries outside the U.S.;
• sanctions, import and export controls, other market access barriers, political unrest, geopolitical tensions, changes in regimes, or armed conflict (such as ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine), any of which may affect our business continuity, increase our operating costs, limit demand for our products and services, limit our ability to source components or final products, or prevent or impede us from operating in certain jurisdictions, complying with local laws, or offering products or services;
• longer payment cycles in some countries, increased credit risk, and higher levels of payment fraud;• an evolving foreign policy landscape that could harm our revenues and could subject us to litigation, new regulatory costs and challenges (including new customer requirements), uncertainty regarding regulatory outcomes, and other liabilities under local laws that may not offer due process or clear legal precedent;• anti-corruption laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and other local laws prohibiting certain payments to government officials, violations of which could result in civil and criminal penalties; and• different employee/employer relationships; different labor laws, regulations, and labor practices; and other challenges caused by distance, language, local expertise, and cultural differences, increasing the complexity of doing business in multiple jurisdictions.Because we conduct business in currencies other than U.S. dollars but report our financial results in U.S. dollars, we have faced, and will continue to face, exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. Although we hedge a portion of our international currency exposure, significant fluctuations in exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies have in the past and may in the future adversely affect our revenues and earnings. Hedging programs are also inherently risky and could expose us to additional risks that could harm our financial condition and operating results.
We are exposed to fluctuations in the fair values of our investments and, in some instances, our financial statements incorporate inherently subjective valuation methodologies.The fair value of our debt and equity investments may in the future be, and certain investments have been in the past, negatively affected by liquidity, credit deterioration or losses, performance and financial results of the underlying entities, foreign exchange rates, changes in interest rates, the effect of new or changing regulations, the stock market in general, or other factors.
We measure certain of our non-marketable equity and debt securities, certain other instruments including stock-based compensation awards settled in the stock of Other Bet companies, and certain assets and liabilities acquired in a business combination, at fair value on a nonrecurring basis, which is inherently subjective and requires management judgment and estimation. All gains and losses on non-marketable equity securities are recognized in OI&E, which increases the volatility of our OI&E. The unrealized gains and losses or impairments we record from fair value remeasurements in any particular period may differ significantly from the gains and losses we ultimately realize on such investments.As a result of these factors, the value of our investments could decline, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.
Risks Related to our Industry
People access our products and services through a variety of platforms and devices that continue to evolve with the advancement of technology and user preferences. If manufacturers and users do not widely adopt versions of our products and services developed for these interfaces, our business could be harmed.People access our products and services through a growing variety of devices such as desktop computers, phones, laptops and tablets, video game consoles, voice-activated speakers, wearables (including virtual reality and augmented reality devices), automobiles, and television-streaming devices. Our products and services may be less popular on some interfaces. Each manufacturer or distributor may establish unique technical standards for its devices, and our products and services may not be available or may only be available with limited functionality for our users or our advertisers on these devices as a result. Some manufacturers may also elect not to include our products on their devices.15.
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Alphabet Inc.It is hard to predict the challenges we may encounter in adapting our products and services and developing competitive new products and services. We expect to continue to devote significant resources to creating and supporting products and services across multiple platforms and devices. Failing to attract and retain a substantial number of device manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, developers, and users, or failing to develop products and technologies that work well on new devices and platforms, could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results and ability to capture future business opportunities.Issues in the development and use of AI may result in reputational harm and increased liability exposure.Our evolving AI-related efforts may give rise to risks related to harmful content, inaccuracies, discrimination, intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, violation of rights of publicity, defamation, data privacy, cybersecurity, and other issues. As a result of these and other challenges associated with innovative technologies, our implementation of AI systems could subject us to competitive harm, regulatory action, legal liability (including under new and proposed legislation and regulations), new applications of existing data protection, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws, and brand or reputational harm.Some uses of AI will present ethical issues and may have broad effects on society. In order to implement AI responsibly and minimize unintended harmful effects, we have already devoted and will continue to invest significant resources to develop, test, and maintain our products and services, but we may not be able to identify or resolve all AI-related issues, deficiencies, and/or failures before they arise. Unintended consequences, uses, or customization of our AI tools and systems may negatively affect human rights, privacy, employment, or other social concerns, which may result in claims, lawsuits, brand or reputational harm, and increased regulatory scrutiny, any of which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Data privacy and security concerns relating to our technology and our practices could harm our reputation, cause us to incur significant liability, and deter current and potential users or customers from using our products and services. Computer viruses, software bugs or defects, security breaches, and attacks on our systems could result in the improper disclosure and use of user data and interference with our users’ and customers’ ability to use our products and services, harming our business and reputation.
Concerns about, including the adequacy of, our practices with regard to the collection, use, governance, disclosure, or security of personal data or other data-privacy-related matters, even if unfounded, could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our policies and practices may change over time as expectations and regulations regarding privacy and data change.Our products and services involve the storage, handling, and transmission of proprietary and other sensitive information. Malicious software such as viruses, software bugs, theft, misuse, defects, vulnerabilities in our products and services, as well as cyber attacks, phishing schemes, and other types of security breaches expose us to a risk of loss or improper use and disclosure of such information, which could result in litigation and other potential liabilities, including regulatory fines and penalties, as well as reputational harm. Additionally, our products incorporate highly technical and complex technologies, and thus our technologies and software have contained, and are likely in the future to contain, undetected errors, bugs, and/or vulnerabilities. We continue to add new features involving AI to our offerings and internal systems, and features that rely on AI may be susceptible to unanticipated security threats as our and the market’s understanding of AI-centric security risks and protection methods continue to develop. We have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, some errors in our software code only after we have released the code. Systems and control failures, security breaches, failure to comply with our privacy policies, and/or inadvertent disclosure of user data could result in regulatory and legal exposure, seriously harm our reputation, brand, and business, and impair our ability to attract and retain users or customers. Such incidents have occurred in the past and may continue to occur due to the scale and nature of our products and services. While there is no guarantee that such incidents will not cause significant damage, we expect to continue to expend significant resources to maintain security protections that limit the effect of bugs, theft, misuse, and security vulnerabilities or breaches.
We experience cyber attacks and other attempts to gain unauthorized access to our systems on a regular basis. Cyber attacks continue to evolve in sophistication and volume, and inherently may be difficult to detect for long periods of time. For example, the development and implementation of AI technologies may further increase our exposure to or exacerbate the risks of cyber attacks or other security incidents, particularly where such technologies are exploited by third parties to breach our or other parties’ systems, including when such technologies are used to target our employees or impersonate members of senior management in order to gain unauthorized access to our systems. We have also seen, and will continue to see, industry-wide software supply chain vulnerabilities, which could affect our or other parties’ systems. We expect to continue to experience such incidents or vulnerabilities in the future. Our efforts to prevent security incidents and address undesirable activity on our platform may require us to spend additional resources to prepare and defend against such threats, and could also increase the risk of retaliatory attack. In addition,16.
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Alphabet Inc.we face the risk of cyber attacks by nation-states and state-sponsored actors. These attacks may target us or our customers, particularly our public sector customers (including federal, state, and local governments). Geopolitical tensions or armed conflicts, such as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, may increase these risks.
We may experience security and/or privacy issues, whether due to employee or insider error or malfeasance, system errors, or vulnerabilities in our or other parties’ systems. While we may not determine some of these issues to be material at the time they occur and may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries, enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity. There is also no guarantee that a series of related issues may not be determined to be material at a later date in the aggregate, even if they may not be material individually at the time of their occurrence. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, disable or degrade service provided by or otherwise sabotage systems change frequently and often are recognized only after being launched against a target, even taking all reasonable precautions, including those required by law, we have been unable in the past and may continue to be unable to anticipate or detect attacks or vulnerabilities or implement adequate preventative measures.Further, if any partners with whom we share user or other customer information fail to implement adequate data-security practices, fail to comply with our terms and policies, or otherwise suffer a network or other security breach, our users’ data may be improperly accessed, used, or disclosed. If an actual or perceived breach of our or our business partners’ or service providers’ security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures would be harmed, we could lose users and customers, our trade secrets or those of our business partners may be compromised, and we may be exposed to significant legal and financial risks, including legal claims (which may include class-action litigation) and regulatory actions, fines, and penalties. Any of the foregoing consequences could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
While we have dedicated significant resources to privacy and security incident response capabilities, including dedicated worldwide incident response teams, our response process, particularly during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not be fast enough to prevent or limit harm, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident. As a result, we may suffer significant legal, reputational, or financial exposure, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
For additional information, see also our risk factor on privacy and data protection regulations under ‘Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies’ below.
Our ongoing investments in safety, security, and content review will likely continue to identify abuse of our platforms and misuse of user data.
In addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate cyber attacks, we are making significant investments in safety, security, and review efforts to combat misuse of our services and unauthorized access to user data by third parties, including investigation and review of platform applications that could access the information of users of our services. As a result of these efforts, we have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, incidents of unnecessary access to or misuse of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties. However, we may not have discovered, and may in the future not discover, all such incidents or activity, whether as a result of our data limitations, including our lack of visibility over our encrypted services, the scale of activity on our platform, or other factors, including factors outside of our control such as a natural disaster or pandemic, and we may learn of such incidents or activity via third parties. Such incidents and activities may include the use of user data or our systems in a manner inconsistent with our terms, contracts or policies, the existence of false or undesirable user accounts, election interference, improper ad purchases, activities that threaten people’s safety on- or off-line, or instances of spamming, scraping, or spreading disinformation. While we may not determine some of these incidents to be material at the time they occurred and we may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries and enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity. There is also no guarantee that a series of related issues may not be determined to be material at a later date in the aggregate, even if they may not be material individually at the time of their occurrence.
We may also be unsuccessful in our efforts to enforce our policies or otherwise prevent or remediate any such incidents. Any of the foregoing developments may negatively affect user trust and engagement, harm our reputation and brands, require us to change our business practices in ways that harm our business operations, and adversely affect our business and financial results. Any such developments may also subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries, which could result in monetary penalties and damages, divert management’s time and attention, and lead to enhanced regulatory oversight.17.
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Alphabet Inc.Problematic content on our platforms, including low-quality user-generated content, web spam, content farms, and other violations of our guidelines could affect the quality of our services, which could harm our reputation and deter our current and potential users from using our products and services.
We, like others in the industry, face violations of our content guidelines across our platforms, including sophisticated attempts by bad actors to manipulate our hosting and advertising systems to fraudulently generate revenues, or to otherwise generate traffic that does not represent genuine user interest or intent. While we invest significantly in efforts to promote high-quality and relevant results and to detect and prevent low-quality content and invalid traffic, we have been unable and may continue to be unable to detect and prevent all such abuses or promote uniformly high-quality content. Increased use of AI in our offerings and internal systems may create new avenues of abuse for bad actors.
Many websites violate or attempt to violate our guidelines, including by seeking to inappropriately rank higher in search results than our search engine's assessment of their relevance and utility would rank them. Such efforts have affected, and may continue to affect, the quality of content on our platforms and lead them to display false, misleading, or undesirable content. Although English-language web spam in our search results has been reduced, and web spam in most other languages is limited, we expect web spammers will continue to seek inappropriate ways to improve their rankings. Although we continue to invest in and deploy proprietary technology to detect and prevent web spam on our platforms, there is no guarantee that our technology will always be successful, and our users may have negative experiences on our platforms if our technology fails to work as intended, which may affect our users' decisions in continuing to use our platforms. We also face other challenges from low-quality and irrelevant content websites, including content farms, which are websites that generate large quantities of low-quality content to help them improve their search rankings. We are continually launching algorithmic changes designed to detect and prevent abuse from low-quality websites, but we may not always be successful. We also face other challenges on our platforms, including violations of our content guidelines involving incidents such as attempted election interference; activities that threaten the safety and/or well-being of our users, including minors, on- or off-line; and the spreading of misinformation or disinformation.If we fail to either detect and prevent an increase in problematic content or effectively promote high-quality content, it could hurt our reputation for delivering relevant information or reduce use of our platforms, harming our financial condition and operating results. It may also subject us to litigation and regulatory actions, which could result in monetary penalties and damages and divert management’s time and attention.
Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users. Internet access providers may be able to restrict, block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.Our products and services depend on the ability of our users to access the Internet, and certain of our products require significant network capacity to work effectively. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant market power in the broadband and internet access marketplace, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and government-owned service providers. Some of these providers have taken, or have stated that they may take, measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of user access to certain of our products by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our offerings, by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings, or by providing our competitors preferential access. Some jurisdictions have adopted regulations prohibiting certain forms of discrimination by internet access providers; however, substantial uncertainty exists in the U.S. and elsewhere regarding such protections. In addition, in some jurisdictions, our products and services have been subject to government-initiated restrictions or blockages. These could harm existing key relationships, including with our users, customers, advertisers, and/or content providers, and impair our ability to attract new ones; harm our reputation; and increase costs, thereby negatively affecting our business.Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies
We are subject to a variety of new, existing, and changing laws and regulations worldwide that could harm our business, and will likely be subject to an even broader scope of laws and regulations as we continue to expand our business.We are subject to numerous U.S. federal and state as well as foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subjects, and our introduction of new businesses, products, services, and technologies will likely continue to subject us to additional laws and regulations. In recent years, governments around the world have proposed and adopted a large number of new laws and regulations relevant to the digital economy, particularly in the areas of data privacy and security, competition, AI, and online content. The costs of compliance with these measures are high and are likely to increase in the future, including as a result of differing, and sometimes conflicting, laws and regulations.18.
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Alphabet Inc.New or changing laws and regulations, or interpretations or applications of existing laws and regulations in a manner inconsistent with our interpretations of such laws and regulations and/or our practices, have resulted in, and may continue to result in, less useful products and services, altered business models and operations, limited ability to pursue certain business practices or offer certain products and services, substantial costs, and civil or criminal liability. Examples include laws and regulations regarding:
• Competition and technology platforms’ business practices: Laws and regulations focused on large technology platforms, including the Digital Markets Act in the European Union (EU); regulations and legal settlements in the U.S., South Korea, and elsewhere that affect Google Play’s billing policies, fees, and business model; as well as litigation and new and expected regulations in a range of jurisdictions, including, among others, in the UK, Japan, and India.
• AI: Laws and regulations focused on the development, use, and provision of AI technologies and other digital products and services, which could result in monetary penalties or other regulatory actions. For example, the EU AI Act came into force on August 1, 2024, and will generally become fully applicable after a two-year transitional period (although certain obligations will take effect at an earlier or later time). The EU AI Act introduces various requirements for AI systems and models placed on the market or put into service in the EU, including specific transparency and other requirements for general purpose AI systems and the models on which those systems are based. In the U.S., there is increasing uncertainty as to the federal government's approach to AI regulation going forward, as the continued applicability of the White House's 2023 Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, which lays out a framework for the U.S. government, among other things, to monitor private sector development of certain foundation models, remains subject to regulatory development. Several states are considering enacting or have already enacted regulations concerning the use of AI technologies, including those focused on consumer protection, and depending on the scope of AI regulation at the federal level, some states may move to regulate AI model development and deployment. Further, at the federal and state level, there have been various proposals (and in some cases laws enacted) addressing “deepfakes” and other AI-generated synthetic media.
• Data privacy, collection, processing, and portability: Laws and regulations further restricting the collection, processing, and/or sharing of user or advertising-related data, including privacy and data protection laws; laws affecting the processing of children's data (as discussed further below), data breach notification laws; laws limiting data transfers (including data localization laws); and laws requiring data portability (including the EU Data Act, as discussed further below).
• Copyright and other intellectual property: Copyright and related laws, including the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and European Economic Area transpositions, which have introduced new licensing regimes, increase liability with respect to content uploaded by users or linked to from our platforms, or create property rights in news publications that could require payments to news agencies and publishers, which may result in other regulatory actions.
• Content moderation: Various laws covering content moderation and removal, and related disclosure obligations, such as the EU's Digital Services Act, Florida’s Senate Bill 7072 and Texas’ House Bill 20, and laws and proposed legislation in Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom that impose penalties for failure to remove certain types of content or require disclosure of information about the operation of our services and algorithms, which may make it harder for services like Google Search and YouTube to detect and deal with low-quality, deceptive, or harmful content, or on the other hand, may impinge on the rights of free expression, which, in turn, could impact how our platforms are viewed by users. Additionally, legislators are increasingly focused on regulating online child safety, including content protections for minors under eighteen years of age. These regulations could result in our having to modify our products and services and incur additional costs to operate and monitor minors’ experiences on our products and services.
• Consumer protection: Consumer protection laws, including the EU’s New Deal for Consumers, which could result in monetary penalties and create a range of new compliance obligations.
In addition, the applicability and scope of these and other laws and regulations, as interpreted by courts, regulators, or administrative bodies, remain uncertain and could be interpreted in ways that harm our business. For example, we rely on statutory safe harbors, like those set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S. and the Digital Services Act in Europe, to protect against liability for various linking, caching, ranking, recommending, and hosting activities. Legislation or court rulings affecting these safe harbors may harm us and may impose significant operational challenges. There are legislative proposals and pending litigation in the U.S., EU, and around the world that could diminish or eliminate safe harbor protection for websites and online platforms. Our development, use, and commercialization of AI products and services (including our19.
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Alphabet Inc.implementation of AI in our offerings and internal systems) could subject us to regulatory action and legal liability, including under specific legislation regulating AI, as well as new applications of existing data protection, cybersecurity, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws.
Further, we are subject to evolving laws, regulations, policies, and international accords relating to matters beyond our core products and services, including environmental sustainability, climate change, human capital, and employment matters. In response, we have implemented robust programs, adopted reporting frameworks and principles, and announced a number of complex and ambitious goals and initiatives that may require considerable investments. We cannot guarantee that our goals and initiatives will be fully realized on the timelines we expect or at all, and projects that are completed as planned may not achieve the results we anticipate.
We are and may continue to be subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government inquiries and investigations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and other forms of regulatory scrutiny and legal liability, including competition matters, that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
We are subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government inquiries and investigations, other proceedings, and orders involving competition, intellectual property, data privacy and security, tax and related compliance, labor and employment, commercial disputes, content generated by our users, goods and services offered by advertisers or publishers using our platforms, personal injury, and other matters.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), various U.S. states, and other plaintiffs have filed, and may continue to file in the future, several antitrust lawsuits about various aspects of our business, including our advertising technologies and practices, the operation and distribution of Google Search, and the operation and distribution of the Android operating system and Play Store.
For example, the DOJ and a number of state Attorneys General filed a lawsuit alleging that Google violated antitrust laws relating to Search and Search advertising, and in August 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google violated such antitrust laws. The Court is holding a separate proceeding to determine remedies, which could include alterations to our products and services and our business models and operations, including structural remedies, and/or our distribution arrangements, among other changes. While we plan to appeal, there can be no assurance that our appeal will succeed, or that we will be able to change or decrease the severity of any remedies that may be ordered, and any or all of these potential remedies could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Also, in December 2023, a California jury delivered a verdict in Epic Games v. Google finding that Google violated antitrust laws relating to Google Play's business. The presiding judge issued a remedies decision in October 2024 that ordered a variety of alterations to our business models and operations and contractual agreements for Android and Google Play. We are appealing the verdict, but if we are unsuccessful, we could face significant expenses to implement the remedies, and such costs and alterations could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Furthermore, in December 2020, several State Attorneys General, led by the Texas Attorney General, filed an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas alleging that Google violated antitrust and other laws relating to its advertising technology. This case is set for trial in March 2025, and we could face significant civil penalties. In January 2023, the DOJ and several Attorneys General sued in the Eastern District of Virginia alleging similar antitrust violations relating to Google’s advertising technology. Trial in the DOJ matter concluded in September 2024 with a decision expected in early 2025. If we are unsuccessful, we could face an order on remedies that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
In addition to these regulatory proceedings, private individual and collective actions that overlap with claims pursued by regulators are pending in the U.S. and in several other jurisdictions. Adverse results in these or similar future lawsuits may include awards of monetary damages and remedies that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Other regulatory agencies in the U.S. and around the world, including competition enforcers, consumer protection agencies, and data protection authorities, have challenged and may continue to challenge our business practices and compliance with laws and regulations. We are cooperating with these investigations and defending litigation or appealing decisions where appropriate.
We are also subject to a variety of claims including product warranty, product liability, and consumer protection claims related to product defects, among other litigation, and we may also be subject to claims involving health and safety, hazardous materials usage, other environmental effects, AI training, development, and commercialization, or service disruptions or failures. Claims have been brought, and we expect will continue to be brought, against us for20.
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Alphabet Inc.defamation, negligence, breaches of contract, patent, copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, unlawful activity, torts, privacy rights violations, fraud, or other legal theories based on the nature and content of information available on or via our services, the design and effect of our products and services, or due to our involvement in hosting, transmitting, marketing, branding, or providing access to content created by third parties.
Various laws, regulations, investigations, enforcement lawsuits, and regulatory actions have involved in the past, and may in the future result in substantial fines and penalties, injunctive relief, ongoing monitoring and auditing obligations, changes to our products and services, alterations to our business models and operations, including divestiture, and collateral related civil litigation or other adverse consequences. Any of these legal proceedings could also result in legal costs, diversion of management resources, and negative publicity, all of which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Estimating liabilities for our pending proceedings is a complex, fact-specific, and speculative process that requires significant judgment, and the amounts we are ultimately liable for may be less than or exceed our estimates. The resolution of one or more such proceedings has resulted in, and may in the future result in, additional substantial fines, penalties, injunctions, and other sanctions that could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
For additional information about the ongoing material legal proceedings to which we are subject, see Legal Proceedings in Item 3 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Privacy, data protection, data usage, and portability regulations are complex and rapidly evolving areas. Any failure or alleged failure to comply with these laws could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Authorities around the world have adopted and are considering a number of legislative and regulatory proposals concerning data protection, data usage and portability, and encryption of user data. Additionally, the increasing adoption of AI technologies, which rely on the collection of large amounts of data and use of such data for training purposes, has led data protection authorities around the world to consider and adopt new and evolving interpretations of data protection laws, imposing specific obligations with respect to the processing of personal data, including required notices, consents, and opt-outs. Further, the increased risk of inadvertent disclosure of confidential information or personal data in connection with the utilization of AI technologies may result in stronger regulatory scrutiny, leading to legal and regulatory investigations and enforcement actions that may negatively affect our business, even if unfounded. Adverse legal rulings, legislation, or regulation have resulted in, and may continue to result in, fines and orders requiring that we change our practices, which have had and could continue to have an adverse effect on how we provide services, harming our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. These laws and regulations are evolving and subject to interpretation, and compliance obligations could cause us to incur substantial costs or harm the quality and operations of our products and services in ways that harm our business. Examples of these laws include:
• The EU General Data Protection Regulation and the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulations, which apply to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or the United Kingdom, respectively, or related to products and services that we offer to EU or the United Kingdom users or customers, respectively, or the monitoring of their behavior in the EU or the UK, respectively.
• Various U.S. federal, U.S. state, and foreign privacy laws related to the processing and security of personal data, including (1) comprehensive privacy laws that provide data privacy rights (including, in California, a private right of action in the event of a data breach resulting from our failure to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices) and impose significant obligations on controllers and processors of consumer data; (2) laws imposing obligations on businesses that collect or disclose biometric information (including, in Illinois, Texas, and Washington); (3) laws governing the collection and processing of children and minor’s data and how companies provide age appropriate online experiences (including, in the U.S., the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, the pending Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), which passed the U.S. Senate in 2024, and similar U.S. state laws related to children’s privacy, such as the New York Child Data Protection Act, and the United Kingdom’s Age-Appropriate Design Code); and (4) laws regulating internet-connected devices (such as, in California, the Internet of Things Security Law).
• The EU’s Digital Markets Act, which will require in-scope companies to obtain user consent for combining data across certain products and require search engines to share anonymized data with rival companies, among other changes; and the EU Data Act, which introduces new data portability requirements with respect to connected products (i.e., ‘internet of things’ products) and related services, as well as interoperability obligations on data processing services.
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Further, we are subject to evolving laws and regulations that dictate whether, how, and under what circumstances we can transfer, process and/or receive personal data, as well as ongoing enforcement actions from supervisory authorities related to cross-border transfers of personal data. The validity of various data transfer mechanisms we currently rely upon remains subject to legal, regulatory, and political developments globally, which may require us to adapt our existing arrangements.
We face, and may continue to face, intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, violation of rights of publicity, and other claims that could be costly to defend, result in significant damage awards or other costs (including indemnification awards), and limit our ability to use certain technologies.
We, like other internet, technology, and media companies, are frequently subject to litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights, including patent, copyright, trade secrets, and trademarks. Parties have also sought broad injunctive relief against us by filing claims in U.S. and international courts and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) for exclusion and cease-and-desist orders. In addition, patent-holding companies may frequently seek to generate income from patents they have obtained by bringing claims against us. As we continue to expand our business, the number of intellectual property claims against us has increased and may continue to increase as we develop and acquire new products, services, and technologies, including AI technologies.Adverse results in any of these lawsuits may include awards of monetary damages, costly royalty or licensing agreements (if licenses are available at all), or orders limiting our ability to sell our products and services in the U.S. or elsewhere, including by preventing us from offering certain features, functionalities, products, or services in certain jurisdictions. They may also cause us to change our business practices in ways that could result in a loss of revenues for us and otherwise harm our business.
Many of our agreements with our customers and partners, including certain suppliers, require us to defend against certain intellectual property infringement claims and in some cases indemnify them for certain intellectual property infringement claims against them, which could result in increased costs for defending such claims or significant damages if there were an adverse ruling in any such claims. Such customers and partners may also discontinue the use of our products, services, and technologies, as a result of injunctions or otherwise, which could result in loss of revenues and harm our business. Moreover, intellectual property indemnities provided to us by our suppliers, when obtainable, may not cover all damages and losses suffered by us and our customers arising from intellectual property infringement claims. Furthermore, in connection with our divestitures, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, including those associated with intellectual property claims. Regardless of their merits, intellectual property claims are often time consuming and expensive to litigate or settle. To the extent such claims are successful, they could harm our business, including our product and service offerings, financial condition, and operating results.We could be subject to changes in tax rates, the adoption of new U.S. or international tax legislation, or exposure to additional tax liabilities.We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the U.S. and numerous foreign jurisdictions. Our effective tax rates are affected by a variety of factors, including changes in the mix of earnings in jurisdictions with different statutory tax rates, net gains and losses on hedges and related transactions under our foreign exchange risk management program, changes in our stock price for shares issued as employee compensation, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets or liabilities, and the application of different provisions of tax laws or changes in tax laws, regulations, or accounting principles (including changes in the interpretation of existing laws). Further, if we are unable or fail to collect taxes on behalf of customers, employees and partners as the withholding agent, we could become liable for taxes that are levied against third parties.
We are subject to regular review and audit by both domestic and foreign tax authorities. As a result, we have received, and may in the future receive, assessments in multiple jurisdictions, on various tax-related assertions, such as transfer-pricing adjustments or permanent-establishment claims. Any adverse outcome of such a review or audit could harm our financial condition and operating results, require adverse changes to our business practices, or subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries. In addition, the determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment and often involves uncertainty. Although we believe our estimates are reasonable, the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and may affect our financial results in the period or periods for which such determination is made.
Furthermore, due to shifting economic and political conditions, tax policies, laws, or rates in various jurisdictions may be subject to significant changes in ways that could harm our financial condition and operating results. For example, various jurisdictions around the world have enacted or are considering revenue-based taxes such as digital services taxes and other targeted taxes, which could lead to inconsistent and potentially overlapping international tax
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Alphabet Inc.regimes. The U.S. has imposed a 1% excise tax on the fair market value of shares repurchased, which could potentially increase in the future. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is coordinating negotiations among more than 140 countries with the goal of achieving consensus around substantial changes to international tax policies, including the implementation of a minimum global effective tax rate of 15%, on which various jurisdictions around the world have either introduced draft legislation or adopted final legislation. O ur effective tax rate and cash tax payments could increase as a result of these changes.Risks Related to Ownership of our StockWe cannot guarantee that any share repurchase program or dividend program will be continuously active or fully consummated or will enhance long-term stockholder value, and share repurchases or dividends could increase the volatility of our stock prices and could diminish our cash reserves.
We engage in share repurchases of our Class A and Class C stock from time to time in accordance with authorizations from the Board of Directors of Alphabet. Our repurchase program does not have an expiration date and does not obligate Alphabet to repurchase any specific dollar amount or to acquire any specific number of shares. In April 2024, we announced the approval of our cash dividend program and began paying regular cash dividends to our Class A, Class B, and Class C stockholders. Any and all future cash dividends are subject to declaration by our Board of Directors in its sole discretion, and in accordance with the requirements of any applicable laws, rules, and regulations, including the Delaware General Corporation Law. Our cash dividend program does not require, and our Board of Directors may decide not to declare, a cash dividend each quarter, and does not obligate our Board of Directors to declare a dividend at any specific dollar amount per share. Any such decision by our Board of Directors may depend on a variety of factors that it may deem relevant, including but not limited to our earnings, liquidity, financial condition, other capital deployment opportunities, level of indebtedness, and general market conditions. Our share repurchases or dividends could affect our share trading prices, increase their volatility, reduce our cash reserves and may be suspended or terminated at any time, which may result in a decrease in the trading prices of our stock.The concentration of our stock ownership limits our stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters.Our Class B stock has 10 votes per share, our Class A stock has one vote per share, and our Class C stock has no voting rights. As of December 31, 2024, Larry Page and Sergey Brin beneficially owned approximately 87.4% of our outstanding Class B stock, which represented approximately 52.1% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. Through their stock ownership, Larry and Sergey have significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets, for the foreseeable future. In addition, because our Class C stock carries no voting rights (except as required by applicable law), the issuance of the Class C stock, including in future stock-based acquisition transactions and to fund employee equity incentive programs, could continue Larry and Sergey’s current relative voting power and their ability to elect all of our directors and to determine the outcome of most matters submitted to a vote of our stockholders. The share repurchases made pursuant to our repurchase program may also affect Larry and Sergey’s relative voting power. This concentrated control limits or severely restricts other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and we may take actions that some of our stockholders do not view as beneficial, which could reduce the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock.Provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could discourage a takeover that stockholders may consider favorable.
Provisions in Alphabet’s certificate of incorporation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. These provisions include the following:
• Our Board of Directors has the right to elect directors to fill a vacancy created by the expansion of the Board of Directors or the resignation, death, or removal of a director.
• Our stockholders may not act by written consent, which makes it difficult to take certain actions without holding a stockholders' meeting.
• Our certificate of incorporation prohibits cumulative voting in the election of directors. This limits the ability of minority stockholders to elect director candidates.• Stockholders must provide advance notice to nominate individuals for election to the Board of Directors or to propose matters that can be acted upon at a stockholders’ meeting. These provisions may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer's own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our company.
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Alphabet Inc.• Our Board of Directors may issue, without stockholder approval, shares of undesignated preferred stock, which makes it possible for our Board of Directors to issue preferred stock with voting or other rights or preferences that could impede the success of any attempt to acquire us.
As a Delaware corporation, we are also subject to certain Delaware anti-takeover provisions. Under Delaware law, a corporation may not engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its outstanding voting stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or, among other things, the Board of Directors has approved the transaction. Our Board of Directors could rely on Delaware law to prevent or delay an acquisition of us.
The trading price for our Class A stock and non-voting Class C stock may continue to be volatile.The trading price of our stock has at times experienced significant volatility and may continue to be volatile. In addition to the factors discussed in this report, the trading prices of our Class A stock and Class C stock have fluctuated, and may continue to fluctuate widely, in response to various factors, including, among others, the size or continuity of either our share repurchase or dividend programs, the activities of our peers and changes in broader economic and political conditions around the world. These broad market and industry factors could harm the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock, regardless of our actual operating performance.General Risks
Our operating results may fluctuate, which makes our results difficult to predict and could cause our results to fall short of expectations.
Our operating results have fluctuated, and may in the future fluctuate, as a result of a number of factors, many outside of our control, including the cyclical nature and seasonality in our business and geopolitical events. As a result, comparing our operating results (including our expenses as a percentage of our revenues) on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful, and our past results should not be relied on as an indication of our future performance. Consequently, our operating results in future quarters may fall below expectations.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures could result in operating difficulties, dilution, and other consequences that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures are important elements of our overall corporate strategy and use of capital, and these transactions could be material to our financial condition and operating results. We expect to continue to evaluate and enter into discussions regarding a wide array of such potential strategic arrangements, which could create unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. Some of the areas where we face risks include:
• diversion of management time and focus from operating our business to challenges related to acquisitions and other strategic arrangements;• failure to obtain required approvals on a timely basis, if at all, from governmental authorities; conditions placed upon approval that could, among other things, delay or prevent us from completing a transaction, or otherwise restrict our ability to realize the expected financial or strategic goals of a transaction; or investigations or litigation by governmental authorities related to our acquisitions and other strategic arrangements;• failure to successfully integrate the acquired operations, technologies, services, and personnel (including cultural integration and retention of employees) and further develop the acquired business or technology;
• implementation of controls (or remediation of control deficiencies), procedures, and policies at the acquired company;
• integration of the acquired company’s accounting and other administrative systems, and the coordination of product, engineering, and sales and marketing functions;
• transition of operations, users, and customers onto our existing platforms;
• in the case of foreign acquisitions, the need to integrate operations across different cultures and languages and to address the particular economic, currency, political, and regulatory risks associated with specific countries;
• failure to accomplish commercial, strategic or financial objectives with respect to investments, joint ventures, and other strategic arrangements;
• failure to realize the value of investments and joint ventures due to a lack of liquidity;• liability for activities of the acquired company before the acquisition, including patent and trademark infringement claims, data privacy and security issues, violations of laws, commercial disputes, tax liabilities, warranty claims, product liabilities, and other known and unknown liabilities; and
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Alphabet Inc.• litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company, including claims from terminated employees, customers, former stockholders, or other third parties.
Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and other strategic arrangements could cause us to fail to realize their anticipated benefits, incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally.Our acquisitions and other strategic arrangements could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, or amortization expenses, or impairment of goodwill and/or purchased long-lived assets, and restructuring charges, any of which could harm our financial condition and operating results. Also, the anticipated benefits or value of our acquisitions and other strategic arrangements may not materialize. In connection with our divestitures and certain other strategic arrangements, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.We rely on highly skilled personnel and, if we are unable to retain or motivate key personnel, hire qualified personnel, or maintain and continue to adapt our corporate culture, we may not be able to grow or operate effectively.
Our performance and future success depends in large part upon the continued service of key technical leads as well as members of our senior management team. For instance, Sundar Pichai is critical to the overall management of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and plays an important role in the development of our technology, maintaining our culture, and setting our strategic direction.Our ability to compete effectively and our future success depend on our continuing to identify, hire, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled personnel for all areas of our organization. Competition in our industry for qualified employees is intense, and certain of our competitors have directly targeted, and may continue to target, our employees. In addition, our compensation arrangements, such as our equity award programs, may not always be successful in attracting new employees and retaining and motivating our existing employees. Immigration policy and regulatory changes may also affect our ability to hire, mobilize, or retain some of our global talent. All of our executive officers and key employees are at-will employees, and we do not maintain any key-person life insurance policies.In addition, we believe that our corporate culture fosters innovation, creativity, and teamwork. As our organization grows and evolves, we may need to adapt our corporate culture and work environments to ever-changing circumstances, such as during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, and these changes could affect our ability to compete effectively or have an adverse effect on our corporate culture. Under our hybrid work models, we may experience increased costs and/or disruption, in addition to potential effects on our ability to operate effectively and maintain our corporate culture.
Item 7 · Management's Discussion & Analysis
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FY 2023-12-31 (earlier)
ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Please read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with “Note about Forward-Looking Statements,” Part I, Item 1 "Business," Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors," and our consolidated financial statements and related notes included under Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.The following section generally discusses 2023 results compared to 2022 results. Discussion of 2022 results compared to 2021 results to the extent not included in this report can be found in Item 7 of our 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K.Understanding Alphabet’s Financial ResultsAlphabet is a collection of businesses — the largest of which is Google. We report Google in two segments, Google Services and Google Cloud; we also report all non-Google businesses collectively as Other Bets. For additional information on our segments, see Part I, Item 1 Business and Note 15 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect
The following long-term trends have contributed to the results of our consolidated operations, and we anticipate that they will continue to affect our future results:
• Users' behaviors and advertising continue to shift online as the digital economy evolves.The continuing evolution of the online world has contributed to the growth of our business and our revenues since inception. We expect that this evolution will continue to benefit our business and our revenues, although at a slower pace than we have experienced historically, in particular after the outsized growth in our advertising revenues during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we face increasing competition for user engagement and advertisers, which may affect our revenues.• Users continue to access our products and services using diverse devices and modalities, which allows for new advertising formats that may benefit our revenues but adversely affect our margins.Our users are accessing our products and services via diverse devices and modalities, such as smartphones, wearables, connected TVs, and smart home devices, and want to be able to be connected no matter where they are or what they are doing. We are focused on expanding our products and services to stay in front of these trends in order to maintain and grow our business.We benefit from advertising revenues generated from different channels, including mobile, and newer advertising formats. The margins from these channels and newer products have generally been lower than those from traditional desktop search. Additionally, as the market for a particular device type or modality matures, our advertising revenues may be affected. For example, changing dynamics within the global smartphone market, such as increased market saturation in developed countries, can affect our mobile advertising revenues.
We expect TAC paid to our distribution partners and Google Network partners to increase as our revenues grow and TAC as a percentage of our advertising revenues ("TAC rate") to be affected by changes in device mix; geographic mix; partner agreement terms; partner mix; the percentage of queries channeled through paid access points; product mix; the relative revenue growth rates of advertising revenues from different channels; and revenue share terms.
We expect these trends to continue to affect our revenues and put pressure on our margins.
• As online advertising evolves, we continue to expand our product offerings, which may affect our monetization.As interactions between users and advertisers change, and as online user behavior evolves, we continue to expand our product offerings to serve these changing needs, which may affect our monetization. For example, revenues from ads on YouTube and Google Play monetize at a lower rate than our traditional search ads. We also expect to continue to incorporate AI innovations into our products, such as AI in Search, that could affect our monetization trends. When developing new products and services we generally focus first on user experience and then on monetization.• As users in developing economies increasingly come online, our revenues from international markets continue to increase, and may require continued investments. In addition, movements in foreign exchange rates affect such revenues.29.Table of Contents
Alphabet Inc.The shift to online, as well as the advent of the multi-device world, has brought opportunities outside of the U.S., including in emerging markets, such as India. We continue to invest heavily and develop localized versions of our products and advertising programs relevant to our users in these markets. This has led to a trend of increased revenues from emerging markets. We expect that our results will continue to be affected by our performance in these markets, particularly as low-cost mobile devices become more available. This trend could affect our revenues as developing markets initially monetize at a lower rate than more mature markets.International revenues represent a significant portion of our revenues and are subject to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates relative to the U.S. dollar. While we have a foreign exchange risk management program designed to reduce our exposure to these fluctuations, this program does not fully offset their effect on our revenues and earnings.
• The revenues that we derive beyond advertising are increasing and may adversely affect our margins.
Revenues from cloud, consumer subscriptions, platforms, and devices, which may have differing characteristics than our advertising revenues, have grown over time, and we expect this trend to continue as we focus on expanding our products and services. The margins on these revenues vary significantly and are generally lower than the margins on our advertising revenues. For example, sales of our devices adversely affect our consolidated margins due to pressures on pricing and higher cost of sales.
• As we continue to serve our users and expand our businesses, we will invest heavily in operating and capital expenditures.We continue to make significant research and development investments in areas of strategic focus as we seek to develop new, innovative offerings, improve our existing offerings, and rapidly and responsibly deploy AI across our businesses. We also expect to increase, relative to 2023, our investment in our technical infrastructure, including servers, network equipment, and data centers, to support the growth of our business and our long-term initiatives, in particular in support of AI products and services. In addition, acquisitions and strategic investments contribute to the breadth and depth of our offerings, expand our expertise in engineering and other functional areas, and build strong partnerships around strategic initiatives.• We continue to face an evolving regulatory environment, and we are subject to claims, lawsuits, investigations, and other forms of potential legal liability, which could affect our business practices and financial results.Changes in social, political, economic, tax, and regulatory conditions or in laws and policies governing a wide range of topics and related legal matters, including investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory actions, have resulted in fines and caused us to change our business practices. As these global trends continue, our cost of doing business may increase, our ability to pursue certain business models or offer certain products or services may be limited, and we may need to change our business practices to comply with evolving regulatory and legal matters. Examples include the antitrust complaints filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and a number of state Attorneys General; legislative proposals and pending litigation in the U.S., EU, and around the world that could diminish or eliminate safe harbor protection for websites and online platforms; and the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act in Europe and various legislative proposals in the U.S. focused on large technology platforms. For additional information, see Item 1A Risk Factors and Legal Matters in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.• Our employees are critical to our success and we expect to continue investing in them.
Our employees are among our best assets and are critical for our continued success. We expect to continue hiring talented employees around the globe and to provide competitive compensation programs. For additional information, see Culture and Workforce in Part I, Item 1 Business of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Revenues and Monetization MetricsWe generate revenues by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising; cloud-based solutions that provide enterprise customers of all sizes with infrastructure and platform services as well as communication and collaboration tools; sales of other products and services, such as apps and in-app purchases, and devices; and fees received for consumer subscription-based products. For additional information on how we recognize revenue, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
In addition to the long-term trends and their financial effect on our business discussed above, fluctuations in our revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by a combination of general factors, including:• changes in foreign currency exchange rates;30.
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Alphabet Inc.• changes in pricing, such as those resulting from changes in fee structures, discounts, and customer incentives;
• general economic conditions and various external dynamics, including geopolitical events, regulations, and other measures and their effect on advertiser, consumer, and enterprise spending;• new product and service launches; and• seasonality.Additionally, fluctuations in our revenues generated from advertising ("Google advertising"), revenues from other sources ("Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues"), Google Cloud, and Other Bets revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by other factors unique to each set of revenues, as described below.Google Services
Google Services revenues consist of Google advertising as well as Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues.
Google Advertising
Google advertising revenues are comprised of the following:
• Google Search & other, which includes revenues generated on Google search properties (including revenues from traffic generated by search distribution partners who use Google.com as their default search in browsers, toolbars, etc.), and other Google owned and operated properties like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play;
• YouTube ads, which includes revenues generated on YouTube properties; and
• Google Network, which includes revenues generated on Google Network properties participating in AdMob, AdSense, and Google Ad Manager.
We use certain metrics to track how well traffic across various properties is monetized as it relates to our advertising revenues: paid clicks and cost-per-click pertain to traffic on Google Search & other properties, while impressions and cost-per-impression pertain to traffic on our Google Network properties.
Paid clicks represent engagement by users and include clicks on advertisements by end-users on Google search properties and other Google owned and operated properties including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play. Cost-per-click is defined as click-driven revenues divided by our total number of paid clicks and represents the average amount we charge advertisers for each engagement by users.
Impressions include impressions displayed to users on Google Network properties participating primarily in AdMob, AdSense, and Google Ad Manager. Cost-per-impression is defined as impression-based and click-based revenues divided by our total number of impressions, and represents the average amount we charge advertisers for each impression displayed to users.
As our business evolves, we periodically review, refine, and update our methodologies for monitoring, gathering, and counting the number of paid clicks and the number of impressions, and for identifying the revenues generated by the corresponding click and impression activity.
Fluctuations in our advertising revenues, as well as the change in paid clicks and cost-per-click on Google Search & other properties and the change in impressions and cost-per-impression on Google Network properties and the correlation between these items have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as:
• advertiser competition for keywords;
• changes in advertising quality, formats, delivery or policy;
• changes in device mix;
• seasonal fluctuations in internet usage, advertising expenditures, and underlying business trends, such as traditional retail seasonality; and
• traffic growth in emerging markets compared to more mature markets and across various verticals and channels.31.
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Google Subscriptions, Platforms, and DevicesGoogle subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues are comprised of the following:• consumer subscriptions, which primarily include revenues from YouTube services, such YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, and NFL Sunday Ticket, as well as Google One;
• platforms, which primarily include revenues from Google Play from the sales of apps and in-app purchases;• devices, which primarily include sales of the Pixel family of devices; and
• other products and services.Fluctuations in our Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as changes in customer usage and demand, number of subscribers, and fluctuations in the timing of product launches.Google Cloud
Google Cloud revenues are comprised of the following:• Google Cloud Platform, which generates consumption-based fees and subscriptions for infrastructure, platform, and other services. These services provide access to solutions such as cybersecurity, databases, analytics, and AI offerings including our AI infrastructure, Vertex AI platform, and Duet AI for Google Cloud;
• Google Workspace, which includes subscriptions for cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for enterprises, such as Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Meet, with integrated features like Duet AI in Google Workspace; and• other enterprise services.Fluctuations in our Google Cloud revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as customer usage.Other BetsRevenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of healthcare-related services and internet services.Costs and ExpensesOur cost structure has two components: cost of revenues and operating expenses. Our operating expenses include costs related to R&D, sales and marketing, and general and administrative functions. Certain of our costs and expenses, including those associated with the operation of our technical infrastructure as well as components of our operating expenses, are generally less variable in nature and may not correlate to changes in revenue. Additionally, fluctuations in compensation expenses may not directly correlate with changes in headcount, in particular due to annual stock-based compensation (SBC) awards that generally vest over four years.Cost of Revenues
Cost of revenues is comprised of TAC and other costs of revenues.
• TAC includes:
◦ amounts paid to our distribution partners who make available our search access points and services. Our distribution partners include browser providers, mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers, and software developers; and
◦ amounts paid to Google Network partners primarily for ads displayed on their properties.
• Other cost of revenues primarily includes:◦ compensation expense related to our data centers and other operations such as content review and customer and product support;
◦ content acquisition costs, which are payments to content providers from whom we license video and other content for distribution on YouTube and Google Play (we pay fees to these content providers based on revenues generated or a flat fee);
◦ depreciation expense related to our technical infrastructure; and
◦ inventory and other costs related to the devices we sell.
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Alphabet Inc.TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Network properties are significantly higher than TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Search & other properties, because most of the advertiser revenues from ads served on Google Network properties are paid as TAC to our Google Network partners.
Operating ExpensesOperating expenses are generally incurred during our normal course of business, which we categorize as either R&D, sales and marketing, or general and administrative.
The main components of our R&D expenses are:• compensation expenses for engineering and technical employees responsible for R&D related to our existing and new products and services;
• depreciation; and• third-party services fees primarily relating to consulting and outsourced services in support of our engineering and product development efforts.
The main components of our sales and marketing expenses are:• compensation expenses for employees engaged in sales and marketing, sales support, and certain customer service functions; and
• spending relating to our advertising and promotional activities in support of our products and services.The main components of our general and administrative expenses are:• compensation expenses for employees in finance, human resources, information technology, legal, and other administrative support functions;
• expenses relating to legal matters, including certain fines and settlements; and• third-party services fees, including audit, consulting, outside legal, and other outsourced administrative services.
Other Income (Expense), Net
OI&E, net primarily consists of interest income (expense), the effect of foreign currency exchange gains (losses), net gains (losses) and impairment on our marketable and non-marketable securities, performance fees, and income (loss) and impairment from our equity method investments.For additional information, including how we account for our investments and factors that can drive fluctuations in the value of our investments, see Note 1 and Note 3 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 as well as Item 7A Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes represents the estimated amount of federal, state, and foreign income taxes incurred in the U.S. and the many jurisdictions in which we operate. The provision includes the effect of reserve provisions and changes to reserves that are considered appropriate as well as the related net interest and penalties.
For additional information, including a reconciliation of the U.S. federal statutory rate to our effective tax rate, see Note 14 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.33.Table of Contents
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Executive Overview
The following table summarizes our consolidated financial results (in millions, except for per share information and percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023 $ Change % Change
Consolidated revenues $ 282,836 $ 307,394 $ 24,558 9 %Change in consolidated constant currency revenues (1)10 %
Cost of revenues $ 126,203 $ 133,332 $ 7,129 6 %
Operating expenses $ 81,791 $ 89,769 $ 7,978 10 %
Operating income $ 74,842 $ 84,293 $ 9,451 13 %
Operating margin 26 % 27 % 1 %
Other income (expense), net $ (3,514) $ 1,424 $ 4,938 NM
Net income $ 59,972 $ 73,795 $ 13,823 23 %
Diluted EPS $ 4.56 $ 5.80 $ 1.24 27 %
NM = Not Meaningful(1) See "Use of Non-GAAP Constant Currency Information" below for details relating to our use of constant currency information.• Revenues were $307.4 billion, an increase of 9% year over year, primarily driven by an increase in Google Services revenues of $19.0 billion, or 8%, and an increase in Google Cloud revenues of $6.8 billion, or 26%.
• Total constant currency revenues, which exclude the effect of hedging, increased 10% year over year.
• Cost of revenues was $133.3 billion, an increase of 6% year over year, primarily driven by increases in content acquisition costs, compensation expenses, and TAC. The increase in compensation expenses included charges related to employee severance associated with the reduction in our workforce. Additionally, cost of revenues benefited from a reduction in depreciation due to the change in estimated useful lives of our servers and network equipment.
• Operating expenses were $89.8 billion, an increase of 10% year over year, primarily driven by an increase in compensation expenses and charges related to our office space optimization efforts. The increase in compensation expenses was largely the result of charges related to employee severance associated with the reduction in our workforce and an increase in SBC expense. Operating expenses benefited from the change in the estimated useful lives of our servers and certain network equipment.Other Information:• In January 2023, we announced a reduction of our workforce, and as a result we recorded employee severance and related charges of $2.1 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. In addition, we are taking actions to optimize our global office space. As a result, exit charges recorded during the year ended December 31, 2023, were $1.8 billion. In addition to these exit charges, for the year ended December 31, 2023, we incurred $269 million in accelerated rent and accelerated depreciation. For additional information, see Note 8 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
• In January 2023, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our servers and network equipment, resulting in a change in the estimated useful life of our servers and certain network equipment to six years. The effect of this change was a reduction in depreciation expense of $3.9 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023, recognized primarily in cost of revenues and R&D expenses. For additional information, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
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Alphabet Inc.• On July 21, 2023, the IRS announced a rule change allowing taxpayers to temporarily apply the regulations in effect prior to 2022 related to U.S. federal foreign tax credits. This announcement applies to foreign taxes paid or accrued in the fiscal years 2022 and 2023. A cumulative one-time adjustment applicable to the prior period for this tax rule change was recorded in 2023 and is reflected in our effective tax rate of 13.9% for the year ended December 31, 2023.
• Repurchases of Class A and Class C shares were $62.2 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. For additional information, see Note 11 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
• Operating cash flow was $101.7 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023.
• Capital expenditures, which primarily reflected investments in technical infrastructure, were $32.3 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023.
• As of December 31, 2023, we had 182,502 employees.Financial Results
Revenues
The following table presents revenues by type (in millions):
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Google Search & other $ 162,450 $ 175,033
YouTube ads 29,243 31,510
Google Network 32,780 31,312
Google advertising 224,473 237,855Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices29,055 34,688
Google Services total 253,528 272,543
Google Cloud 26,280 33,088
Other Bets 1,068 1,527
Hedging gains (losses) 1,960 236
Total revenues $ 282,836 $ 307,394Google Services
Google advertising revenues
Google Search & otherGoogle Search & other revenues increased $12.6 billion from 2022 to 2023. The overall growth was driven by interrelated factors including increases in search queries resulting from growth in user adoption and usage on mobile devices; growth in advertiser spending; and improvements we have made in ad formats and delivery.YouTube adsYouTube ads revenues increased $2.3 billion from 2022 to 2023. The growth was driven by our brand and direct response advertising products, both of which benefited from increased spending by our advertisers.Google NetworkGoogle Network revenues decreased $1.5 billion from 2022 to 2023, primarily driven by a decrease in Google Ad Manager and AdSense revenues.
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Alphabet Inc.Monetization MetricsThe following table presents changes in monetization metrics for Google Search & other revenues (paid clicks and cost-per-click) and Google Network revenues (impressions and cost-per-impression), expressed as a percentage, from 2022 to 2023:Google Search & otherPaid clicks change 7 %
Cost-per-click change 1 %Google Network
Impressions change(5) %Cost-per-impression change0 %Changes in paid clicks and impressions are driven by a number of interrelated factors, including changes in advertiser spending; ongoing product and policy changes; and, as it relates to paid clicks, fluctuations in search queries resulting from changes in user adoption and usage, primarily on mobile devices.
Changes in cost-per-click and cost-per-impression are driven by a number of interrelated factors including changes in device mix, geographic mix, advertiser spending, ongoing product and policy changes, product mix, property mix, and changes in foreign currency exchange rates.Google subscriptions, platforms, and devicesGoogle subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues increased $5.6 billion from 2022 to 2023 primarily driven by growth in subscriptions, largely for YouTube services. The growth in YouTube services was primarily due to an increase in paid subscribers.
Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues increased $1.0 billion from 2021 to 2022 primarily driven by growth in subscription and device revenues, partially offset by a decrease in platform revenues. The growth in subscriptions was largely for YouTube services, primarily due to an increase in paid subscribers. The growth in device revenues was primarily driven by increased sales of Pixel devices. The decrease in platform revenues was primarily due to Google Play, driven by the fee structure changes we announced in 2021 as well as a decrease in buyer spending. Additionally, the overall increase in Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues was adversely affected by the unfavorable effect of foreign currency exchange rates.Google CloudGoogle Cloud revenues increased $6.8 billion from 2022 to 2023. Growth was primarily driven by Google Cloud Platform followed by Google Workspace offerings. Google Cloud's infrastructure and platform services were the largest drivers of growth in Google Cloud Platform.Revenues by Geography
The following table presents revenues by geography as a percentage of revenues, determined based on the addresses of our customers:
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
United States 48 % 47 %
EMEA 29 % 30 %
APAC 16 % 17 %Other Americas 6 % 6 %Hedging gains (losses) 1 % 0 %For additional information, see Note 2 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.36.
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Alphabet Inc.Use of Non-GAAP Constant Currency Information
International revenues, which represent a significant portion of our revenues, are generally transacted in multiple currencies and therefore are affected by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.
The effect of currency exchange rates on our business is an important factor in understanding period-to-period comparisons. We use non-GAAP constant currency revenues ("constant currency revenues") and non-GAAP percentage change in constant currency revenues ("percentage change in constant currency revenues") for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. We believe the presentation of results on a constant currency basis in addition to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) results helps improve the ability to understand our performance, because it excludes the effects of foreign currency volatility that are not indicative of our core operating results.
Constant currency information compares results between periods as if exchange rates had remained constant period over period. We define constant currency revenues as revenues excluding the effect of foreign currency exchange rate movements ("FX Effect") as well as hedging activities, which are recognized at the consolidated level. We use constant currency revenues to determine the constant currency revenue percentage change on a year-on-year basis. Constant currency revenues are calculated by translating current period revenues using prior year comparable period exchange rates, as well as excluding any hedging effects realized in the current period.
Constant currency revenue percentage change is calculated by determining the change in current period revenues over prior year comparable period revenues where current period foreign currency revenues are translated using prior year comparable period exchange rates and hedging effects are excluded from revenues of both periods.
These results should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, results reported in accordance with GAAP. Results on a constant currency basis, as we present them, may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies and are not a measure of performance presented in accordance with GAAP.The following table presents the foreign currency exchange effect on international revenues and total revenues (in millions, except percentages):Year Ended December 31, 2023% Change from Prior Period
Year Ended December 31, Less FX Effect Constant Currency Revenues As Reported Less Hedging Effect Less FX Effect Constant Currency Revenues2022 2023
United States $ 134,814 $ 146,286 $ 0 $ 146,286 9 % 0 % 9 %
EMEA 82,062 91,038 460 90,578 11 % 1 % 10 %
APAC 47,024 51,514 (1,759) 53,273 10 % (3) % 13 %
Other Americas 16,976 18,320 (654) 18,974 8 % (4) % 12 %Revenues, excluding hedging effect280,876 307,158 (1,953) 309,111 9 % (1) % 10 %
Hedging gains (losses) 1,960 236Total revenues (1)$ 282,836 $ 307,394 $ 309,111 9 % 0 % (1) % 10 %
(1) Total constant currency revenues of $309.1 billion for 2023 increased $28.2 billion compared to $280.9 billion in revenues, excluding hedging effect, for 2022.
EMEA revenue growth was favorably affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, primarily due to the U.S. dollar weakening relative to the Euro, partially offset by the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Turkish lira.APAC revenue growth was unfavorably affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, primarily due to the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Japanese yen.Other Americas revenue growth was unfavorably affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, primarily due to the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Argentine peso.
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Alphabet Inc.Costs and Expenses
Cost of Revenues
The following table presents cost of revenues, including TAC (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2021 2022 2023
TAC $ 45,566 $ 48,955 $ 50,886
Other cost of revenues 65,373 77,248 82,446
Total cost of revenues $ 110,939 $ 126,203 $ 133,332
Total cost of revenues as a percentage of revenues 43 % 45 % 43 %
Cost of revenues increased $7.1 billion from 2022 to 2023 due to an increase in other cost of revenues and TAC of $5.2 billion and $1.9 billion, respectively.
The increase in TAC from 2022 to 2023 was largely due to an increase in TAC paid to distribution partners, primarily driven by growth in revenues subject to TAC. The TAC rate decreased from 21.8% to 21.4% from 2022 to 2023 primarily due to a revenue mix shift from Google Network properties to Google Search & other properties. The TAC rate on Google Search & other revenues and the TAC rate on Google Network revenues were both substantially consistent from 2022 to 2023.
The increase in other cost of revenues from 2022 to 2023 was primarily due to increases in content acquisition costs, largely for YouTube, and compensation expenses, which included $479 million of charges related to employee severance associated with the reduction in our workforce. Additionally, other cost of revenues benefited from a reduction in depreciation expense due to the change in estimated useful lives of our servers and network equipment.
The increase in other cost of revenues of $11.9 billion from 2021 to 2022 was primarily due to increases in device costs, compensation expenses, depreciation, and equipment-related expenses.Research and Development
The following table presents R&D expenses (in millions, except percentages):Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Research and development expenses $ 39,500 $ 45,427
Research and development expenses as a percentage of revenues 14 % 15 %
R&D expenses increased $5.9 billion from 2022 to 2023 primarily driven by an increase in compensation expenses of $2.9 billion, $870 million in charges related to our office space optimization efforts, and an increase in depreciation expense of $722 million. The $2.9 billion increase in compensation expenses was largely the result of a 4% increase in average headcount, after adjusting for roles affected by the reduction in our workforce, and an increase in SBC expense. Additionally, the increase in compensation expenses included $848 million in employee severance charges associated with the reduction in our workforce. The $722 million increase in depreciation expense reflected an offsetting benefit of the change in the estimated useful lives of our servers and network equipment.Sales and Marketing
The following table presents sales and marketing expenses (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Sales and marketing expenses $ 26,567 $ 27,917
Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenues 9 % 9 %
Sales and marketing expenses increased $1.4 billion from 2022 to 2023, primarily driven by an increase in compensation expenses of $1.6 billion, partially offset by a decrease in advertising and promotional activities of $441 million. The $1.6 billion increase in compensation expenses was largely the result of $497 million in employee severance charges associated with the reduction in our workforce in addition to a combination of other factors, none of which were individually significant.
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Alphabet Inc.General and Administrative
The following table presents general and administrative expenses (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
General and administrative expenses $ 15,724 $ 16,425
General and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenues 6 % 5 %
General and administrative expenses increased $701 million from 2022 to 2023, primarily driven by an increase in compensation expenses of $416 million, which was largely the result of $264 million in employee severance charges associated with the reduction in our workforce in addition to a combination of other factors, none of which were individually significant.Segment ProfitabilityThe following table presents segment operating income (loss) (in millions).
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023Operating income (loss):Google Services $ 82,699 $ 95,858
Google Cloud (1,922) 1,716
Other Bets (4,636) (4,095)Alphabet-level activities (1)(1,299) (9,186)
Total income from operations $ 74,842 $ 84,293
(1) In addition to the costs included in Alphabet-level activities, hedging gains (losses) related to revenue were $2.0 billion and $236 million in 2022 and 2023, respectively. For the year ended December 31, 2023, Alphabet-level activities include charges related to the reduction in force and our office space optimization efforts totaling $3.9 billion. In addition, for the year ended December 31, 2023, we incurred $269 million in accelerated rent and accelerated depreciation. For additional information relating to our workforce reduction and other initiatives, see Note 8 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. For additional information relating to our segments, see Note 15 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Google ServicesGoogle Services operating income increased $13.2 billion from 2022 to 2023. The increase in operating income was primarily driven by an increase in revenues, partially offset by an increase in content acquisition costs and compensation expenses including an increase in SBC expense. Additionally, operating income benefited from a reduction in costs driven by the change in the estimated useful lives of our servers and certain network equipment.Google CloudGoogle Cloud operating income of $1.7 billion for 2023 compared to an operating loss of $1.9 billion for 2022 represents an increase of $3.6 billion. The increase in operating income was primarily driven by an increase in revenues, partially offset by an increase in compensation expenses largely driven by headcount growth. Additionally, operating income benefited from a reduction in costs driven by the change in the estimated useful lives of our servers and certain network equipment.Other BetsOther Bets operating loss decreased $541 million from 2022 to 2023 primarily due to growth in revenues as well as a reduction in valuation-based compensation liabilities related to Other Bet companies.Other Income (Expense), Net
The following table presents OI&E, (in millions):39.
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Alphabet Inc.Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Interest income $ 2,174 $ 3,865Interest expense(357) (308)
Foreign currency exchange gain (loss), net (654) (1,238)
Gain (loss) on debt securities, net (2,064) (1,215)
Gain (loss) on equity securities, net (3,455) 392
Performance fees 798 257
Income (loss) and impairment from equity method investments, net (337) (628)
Other 381 299
Other income (expense), net $ (3,514) $ 1,424
OI&E, net increased $4.9 billion from 2022 to 2023. The increase was primarily due to fluctuations in the value of equity securities reflecting market driven changes in the value of our marketable equity securities, investment specific event driven changes in our non-marketable equity securities, and increased interest income due to interest rates.
For additional information, see Note 7 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Provision for Income TaxesThe following table presents provision for income taxes (in millions, except for effective tax rate):Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Income before provision for income taxes $ 71,328 $ 85,717
Provision for income taxes $ 11,356 $ 11,922
Effective tax rate 15.9 % 13.9 %
In 2023, the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) issued a rule change allowing taxpayers to temporarily apply the regulations in effect prior to 2022 related to U.S. federal foreign tax credits, as well as a separate rule change with interim guidance on the capitalization and amortization of R&D expenses. A cumulative one-time adjustment applicable to the prior period for these tax rule changes was recorded in 2023.
The effective tax rate decreased from 2022 to 2023, reflecting the effect of the two tax rule changes described above, particularly the change related to foreign tax credits. The effect of these tax rule changes was partially offset by changes in uncertain tax benefits and a decrease in the U.S. federal Foreign Derived Intangible Income tax deduction.
The OECD is coordinating negotiations among more than 140 countries with the goal of achieving consensus around substantial changes to international tax policies, including the implementation of a minimum global effective tax rate of 15%. While various countries have implemented the legislation as of January 1, 2024, we do not expect a resulting material change to our income tax provision for the 2024 fiscal year. As additional jurisdictions enact such legislation, we expect our effective tax rate and cash tax payments could increase in future years.Financial Condition
Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Marketable SecuritiesAs of December 31, 2023 , we had $110.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities. Ca sh equivalents and marketable securities a re comprised of time deposits, money market funds, highly liquid government bonds, corporate debt securities, mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities, and marketable equity securities.Sources, Uses of Cash and Related Trends
Our principal sources of liquidity are cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, as well as the cash flow that we generate from operations. The primary use of capital continues to be to invest for the long-term growth of the business. We regularly evaluate our cash and capital structure, including the size, pace, and form of capital return to stockholders.40.
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Alphabet Inc.The following table presents our cash flows (in millions):
Year Ended December 31,2022 2023
Net cash provided by operating activities $ 91,495 $ 101,746
Net cash used in investing activities $ (20,298) $ (27,063)
Net cash used in financing activities $ (69,757) $ (72,093)Cash Provided by Operating ActivitiesOur largest source of cash provided by operations are advertising revenues generated by Google Search & other properties, Google Network properties, and YouTube properties. In Google Services, we also generate cash through consumer subscriptions and the sale of apps and in-app purchases and devices. In Google Cloud we generate cash through consumption-based fees and subscriptions for infrastructure, platform, collaboration tools, and other cloud services.Our primary uses of cash from operating activities include payments to distribution and Google Network partners, to employees for compensation, and to content providers. Other uses of cash from operating activities include payments to suppliers for devices, to tax authorities for income taxes, and other general corporate expenditures.Net cash provided by operating activities increased from 2022 to 2023 due to the increase in cash received from customers, partially offset by increases in cash paid for cost of revenues and operating expenses.Cash Used in Investing Activities
Cash provided by investing activities consists primarily of maturities and sales of investments in marketable and non-marketable securities. Cash used in investing activities consists primarily of purchases of marketable and non-marketable securities, purchases of property and equipment, and payments for acquisitions.Net cash used in investing activities increased from 2022 to 2023 due to a decrease in maturities and sales of marketable securities, partially offset by a decrease in payments for acquisitions.Cash Used in Financing ActivitiesCash provided by financing activities consists primarily of proceeds from issuance of debt and proceeds from the sale of interests in consolidated entities. Cash used in financing activities consists primarily of repurchases of stock, net payments related to stock-based award activities, and repayments of debt.
Net cash used in financing activities increased from 2022 to 2023 due to an increase in repurchases of stock.Liquidity and Material Cash RequirementsWe expect existing cash, cash equivalents, short-term marketable securities, cash flows from operations and financing activities to continue to be sufficient to fund our operating activities and cash commitments for investing and financing activities for at least the next 12 months and thereafter for the foreseeable future.Capital Expenditures and LeasesWe make investments in land and buildings for data centers and offices and information technology assets through purchases of property and equipment and lease arrangements to provide capacity for the growth of our services and products.Capital Expenditures
Our capital investments in property and equipment consist primarily of the following major categories:• technical infrastructure, which consists of our investments in servers and network equipment for computing, storage, and networking requirements for ongoing business activities, including AI, (collectively referred to as our information technology assets) and data center land and building construction; and• office facilities, ground-up development projects, and building improvements (also referred to as "fit-outs").Construction in progress consists primarily of technical infrastructure and office facilities which have not yet been placed in service. The time frame from date of purchase to placement in service of these assets may extend from months to years. For example, our data center construction projects are generally multi-year projects with multiple phases, where we acquire land and buildings, construct buildings, and secure and install information technology assets.
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During the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, we spent $31.5 billion and $32.3 billion on capital expenditures, respectively. We expect to increase, relative to 2023, our investment in our technical infrastructure, including servers, network equipment, and data centers, to support the growth of our business and our long-term initiatives, in particular in support of AI products and services. Depreciation of our property and equipment commences when the deployment of such assets are completed and are ready for our intended use. Land is not depreciated. For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, our depreciation on property and equipment were $13.5 billion and $11.9 billion, respectively.LeasesFor the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, we recognized total operating lease assets of $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, the amount of total future lease payments under operating leases, which had a weighted average remaining lease term of eight years, was $17.7 billion, of which $3.2 billion is short-term. As of December 31, 2023, we have entered into leases that have not yet commenced with future short-term and long-term lease payments of $657 million and $3.3 billion, that are not yet recorded on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. These leases will commence between 2024 and 2026 with non-cancelable lease terms of one to 25 years.
For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, our operating lease expenses (including variable lease costs) were $3.7 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively. Finance lease costs were not material for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023. For additional information, see Note 4 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.FinancingWe have a short-term debt financing program of up to $10.0 billion through the issuance of commercial paper. Net proceeds from this program are used for general corporate purposes. As of December 31, 2023, we had no commercial paper outstanding.
As of December 31, 2023, we had $10.0 billion of revolving credit facilities, $4.0 billion expiring in April 2024 and $6.0 billion expiring in April 2028. The interest rates for all credit facilities are determined based on a formula using certain market rates, as well as our progress toward the achievement of certain sustainability goals . No amounts have been borrowed under the credit facilities.
As of December 31, 2023, we had senior unsecured notes outstanding with a total carrying value of $12.9 billion with short-term and long-term future interest payments of $214 million and $3.6 billion, respectively. For additional information, see Note 6 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.We primarily utilize contract manufacturers for the assembly of our servers used in our technical infrastructure and devices we sell. We have agreements where we may purchase components directly from suppliers and then supply these components to contract manufacturers for use in the assembly of the servers and devices. Certain of these arrangements result in a portion of the cash received from and paid to the contract manufacturers to be presented as financing activities in the Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Share Repurchase ProgramDuring 2023 we repurchased and subsequently retired 528 million shares for $62.2 billion.
In April 2023, the Board of Directors of Alphabet authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares. As of December 31, 2023, $36.3 billion remains available for Class A and Class C share repurchases.The following table presents Class A and Class C shares repurchased and subsequently retired (in millions):Year Ended December 31, 2022 Year Ended December 31, 2023Shares Amount Shares AmountClass A share repurchases 61 $ 6,719 78 $ 9,316
Class C share repurchases 469 52,577 450 52,868Total share repurchases (1)530 $ 59,296 528 $ 62,184
(1) Shares repurchased include unsettled repurchases as of December 31, 2023.For additional information, see Note 11 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.42.
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Alphabet Inc.European Commission FinesIn 2017, 2018 and 2019, the EC announced decisions that certain actions taken by Google infringed European competition law and imposed fines of €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion as of June 27, 2017), €4.3 billion ($5.1 billion as of June 30, 2018), and €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion as of March 20, 2019), respectively. On September 14, 2022, the General Court reduced the 2018 fine from €4.3 billion to €4.1 billion. We subsequently filed an appeal to the European Court of Justice.
While each EC decision is under appeal, we included the fines in accrued expenses and other current liabilities on our Consolidated Balance Sheets as we provided bank guarantees (in lieu of a cash payment) for the fines. For additional information, see Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.TaxesAs of December 31, 2023 , we had income taxes payabl e of $4.2 billion, of which $2.1 billion was short-term, related to a one-time transition tax payable incurred as a result of the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ("Tax Act"). As permitted by the Tax Act, we will pay the transition tax in annual interest-free installments through 2025. We also have long-term taxes payable of $6.3 billion primarily related to uncertain tax positions as of December 31, 2023 .Purchase Commitments and Other Contractual ObligationsAs of December 31, 2023, we had material purchase commitments and other contractual obligations of $45.9 billion , of which $31.6 billion was short-term. These amounts primarily consist of purchase orders for certain technical infrastructure as well as the non-cancelable portion or the minimum cancellation fee in certain agreements related to commitments to purchase licenses, including content licenses, inventory and network capacity. For those agreements with variable terms, we do not estimate the non-cancelable obligation beyond any minimum quantities and/or pricing as of December 31, 2023. In certain instances, the amount of our contractual obligations may change based on the expected timing of order fulfillment from our suppliers. For more information related to our content licenses, see Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.In addition, we regularly enter into multi-year, non-cancellable agreements to purchase renewable energy and energy attributes, such as renewable energy certificates. These agreements do not include a minimum dollar commitment. The amounts to be paid under these agreements are based on the actual volumes to be generated and are not readily determinable.
Critical Accounting Estimates
We prepare our consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAP. In doing so, we have to make estimates and assumptions. Our critical accounting estimates are those estimates that involve a significant level of uncertainty at the time the estimate was made, and changes in them have had or are reasonably likely to have a material effect on our financial condition or results of operations. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially from our estimates. We base our estimates on past experience and other assumptions that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances, and we evaluate these estimates on an ongoing basis. We have reviewed our critical accounting estimates with the Audit and Compliance Committee of our Board of Directors.
For a summary of significant accounting policies and the effect on our financial statements, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Fair Value Measurements of Non-Marketable Equity Securities
We measure certain financial instruments at fair value on a nonrecurring basis, consisting primarily of our non-marketable equity securities. These investments are accounted for under the measurement alternative method ("the measurement alternative") and are measured at cost, less impairment, subject to upward and downward adjustments resulting from observable price changes for identical or similar investments of the same issuer. These adjustments require quantitative assessments of the fair value of our securities, which may require the use of unobservable inputs. Adjustments are determined primarily based on a market approach as of the transaction date and involve the use of estimates using the best information available, which may include cash flow projections or other available market data.Non-marketable equity securities are also evaluated for impairment, based on qualitative factors including the companies' financial and liquidity position and access to capital resources, among others. When indicators of impairment exist, we prepare quantitative measurements of the fair value of our equity investments using a market approach or an income approach, which requires judgment and the use of unobservable inputs, including discount rates, investee revenues and costs, and comparable market data of private and public companies, among others.
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When the quantitative remeasurements of fair value indicate an impairment exists, we write down the investment to its current fair value.We also have compensation arrangements with payouts based on realized returns from certain investments, i.e. performance fees. We record compensation expense based on the estimated payouts on an ongoing basis, which may result in expense recognized before investment returns are realized and compensation is paid and may require the use of unobservable inputs.
Property and EquipmentWe assess the reasonableness of the useful lives of our property and equipment periodically as well as when other changes occur, such as when there are changes to ongoing business operations, changes in the planned use and utilization of assets, or technological advancements, that could indicate a change in the period over which we expect to benefit from the assets.Income Taxes
We are subject to income taxes in the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in evaluating our uncertain tax positions and determining our provision for income taxes.Recording an uncertain tax position involves various qualitative considerations, including evaluation of comparable and resolved tax exposures, applicability of tax laws, and likelihood of settlement. We evaluate uncertain tax positions periodically, considering changes in facts and circumstances, such as new regulations or recent judicial opinions, as well as the status of audit activities by taxing authorities. Although we believe we have adequately reserved for our uncertain tax positions, no assurance can be given that the final tax outcome of these matters will not be different. To the extent that the final tax outcome of these matters is different than the amounts recorded, such differences will affect the provision for income taxes and the effective tax rate in the period in which such determination is made.
The provision for income taxes includes the effect of reserve provisions and changes to reserves as well as the related net interest and penalties. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by the IRS and other tax authorities which may assert assessments against us. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations and assessments to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes.
Loss Contingencies
We are regularly subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government investigations, other proceedings, and consent orders involving competition, intellectual property, privacy, data security, tax and related compliance, labor and employment, commercial disputes, content generated by our users, goods and services offered by advertisers or publishers using our platforms, personal injury consumer protection, and other matters. Certain of these matters include speculative claims for substantial or indeterminate amounts of damages. We record a liability when we believe that it is probable that a loss has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. If we determine that a loss is reasonably possible and the loss or range of loss can be estimated, we disclose the possible loss in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
We evaluate, on a regular basis, developments in our legal matters that could affect the amount of liability that has been previously accrued, and the matters and related reasonably possible losses disclosed, and make adjustments and changes to our disclosures. Significant judgment is required to determine both the likelihood and the estimated amount of a loss related to such matters. Until the final resolution of such matters, there may be an exposure to loss in excess of the amount recorded, and such amounts could be material.
Change in Accounting Estimate
In January 2023, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our servers and network equipment resulting in a change in the estimated useful life of our servers and certain network equipment to six years. This change in accounting estimate was effective beginning fiscal year 2023. For additional information, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.44.
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FY 2024-12-31 (later)
ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Please read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with “Note about Forward-Looking Statements,” Part I, Item 1 "Business," Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors," and our consolidated financial statements and related notes included under Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.The following section generally discusses 2024 results compared to 2023 results. Discussion of 2023 results compared to 2022 results to the extent not included in this report can be found in Item 7 of our 2023 Annual Report on Form 10-K.Understanding Alphabet’s Financial ResultsAlphabet is a collection of businesses — the largest of which is Google. We report Google in two segments, Google Services and Google Cloud; we also report all non-Google businesses collectively as Other Bets. For further details on our segments, see Part I, Item 1 Business and Note 15 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect
The following long-term trends have contributed to the results of our consolidated operations, and we anticipate that they will continue to affect our future results:
• Users' behaviors and advertising continue to shift online as the digital economy evolves.The continuing evolution of the online world has contributed to the growth of our business and our revenues since inception. We expect that this evolution will continue to benefit our business and our revenues, although at a slower pace than we have experienced historically. In addition, we face increasing competition for user engagement and advertisers, including from other developers and providers of AI products and services, which may affect our revenues.• Users continue to access our products and services using diverse devices and modalities, which allows for new advertising formats that may benefit our revenues but adversely affect our margins.Our users are accessing our products and services via diverse devices and modalities beyond traditional desktop, such as smartphones, wearables, connected TVs, and smart home devices, and want to be able to be connected no matter where they are or what they are doing. We are focused on expanding our products and services to stay in front of these trends in order to maintain and grow our business.We benefit from advertising revenues generated from different channels, including mobile, and newer advertising formats. The margins from these channels and newer products have generally been lower than those from traditional desktop search. Additionally, as the market for a particular device type or modality matures, our advertising revenues may be affected. For example, changing dynamics within the global smartphone market, such as increased market saturation in developed countries, can affect our mobile advertising revenues.
We expect TAC paid to our distribution partners and Google Network partners to increase as our revenues grow and TAC as a percentage of our advertising revenues ("TAC rate") to be affected by changes in device mix; geographic mix; partner agreement terms; partner mix; the percentage of queries channeled through paid access points; product mix; the relative revenue growth rates of advertising revenues from different channels; and revenue share terms.
We expect these trends to continue to affect our revenues and put pressure on our margins.
• As online advertising evolves, we continue to expand our product offerings, which may affect our monetization.As interactions between users and advertisers change, and as online user behavior evolves, for example with AI, we continue to expand our product offerings to serve these changing needs, which may affect monetization of our products and services. We expect to continue to incorporate AI innovations into our products, such as AI in Search, that could affect our monetization trends. When developing new products and services we generally focus first on user experience and then on monetization.• As users in developing economies increasingly come online, our revenues from international markets continue to increase, and may require continued investments. In addition, movements in foreign exchange rates affect such revenues.The shift to online, as well as the advent of the multi-device world, has brought opportunities outside of the U.S., including in emerging markets, such as India. We continue to invest heavily and develop localized versions of our products and advertising programs relevant to our users in these markets. This has led to a trend of increased
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Alphabet Inc.revenues from emerging markets. We expect that our results will continue to be affected by our performance in these markets, particularly as low-cost mobile devices become more available. This trend could affect our revenues as developing markets initially monetize at a lower rate than more mature markets.International revenues represent a significant portion of our revenues and are subject to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates relative to the U.S. dollar. While we have a foreign exchange risk management program designed to reduce our exposure to these fluctuations, this program does not fully offset their effect on our revenues and earnings.
• The revenues that we derive beyond advertising are increasing and may adversely affect our margins.
Revenues from cloud, consumer subscriptions, platforms, and devices, which may have differing characteristics than our advertising revenues, have grown over time, and we expect this trend to continue as we focus on expanding our products and services. The margins on these revenues vary significantly and are generally lower than the margins on our advertising revenues. For example, sales of our devices adversely affect our consolidated margins due to pressures on pricing and higher cost of sales.
• As we continue to serve our users and expand our businesses, we will invest heavily in operating and capital expenditures.We continue to make significant research and development investments in areas of strategic focus as we seek to develop new, innovative offerings, improve our existing offerings, and rapidly and responsibly deploy AI across our businesse s. We also expect to increase, relative to 2024, our i nvestment in our technical infrastructure, including servers, network equipment, and data centers, to support the growth of our business and our long-term initiatives, in particular in support of AI products and services. In addition, acquisitions and strategic investments remain important elements in our use of capital and contribute to the breadth and depth of our offerings, expand our expertise in engineering and other functional areas, and build strong partnerships around strategic initiatives.• We continue to face an evolving regulatory environment, and we are subject to claims, lawsuits, investigations, and other forms of potential legal liability, which could affect our business practices and financial results.Changes in social, political, economic, tax, and regulatory conditions or in laws and policies governing a wide range of topics and related legal matters, including investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory actions, have resulted in fines and caused us to change our business practices. As these global trends continue, our cost of doing business may increase, our products and services may become less useful, our ability to pursue certain business practices or offer certain products or services may be limited, and we may need to change our business models and operations to comply with evolving regulatory and legal matters. For additional information, see Part I, Item 1A Risk Factors and Legal Matters in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.• Our employees are critical to our success and we expect to continue investing in them.
Our employees are among our best assets and are critical for our continued success. We expect to continue hiring talented employees around the globe and to provide competitive compensation programs. For additional information, see Culture and Workforce in Part I, Item 1 Business of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Revenues and Monetization MetricsWe generate revenues by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising; cloud-based solutions that provide enterprise customers of all sizes with infrastructure, platform services, and applications; sales of other products and services, such as fees received for subscription-based products, apps and in-app purchases, and devices. For additional information on how we recognize revenue, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
In addition to the long-term trends and their financial effect on our business discussed above, fluctuations in our revenues have been and may continue to be affected by a combination of factors, including:• changes in foreign currency exchange rates;• changes in pricing, such as those resulting from changes in fee structures, discounts, and customer incentives;
• general economic conditions and various external dynamics, including geopolitical events, regulations, and other measures and their effect on advertiser, consumer, and enterprise spending;• new product, service, and market launches; and
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Alphabet Inc.• seasonality.Additionally, fluctuations in our revenues generated from advertising ("Google advertising"), other sources ("Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices"), Google Cloud, and Other Bets have been, and may continue to be, affected by other factors unique to each set of revenues, as described below.Google Services
Google Services revenues consist of Google advertising as well as Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues.
Google Advertising
Google advertising revenues are comprised of the following:
• Google Search & other, which includes revenues generated on Google search properties (including revenues from traffic generated by search distribution partners who use Google.com as their default search in browsers, toolbars, etc.), and other Google owned and operated properties like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play;
• YouTube ads, which includes revenues generated on YouTube properties; and
• Google Network, which includes revenues generated on Google Network properties participating in AdMob, AdSense, and Google Ad Manager.
We use certain metrics to track how well traffic across various properties is monetized as it relates to our advertising revenues: paid clicks and cost-per-click pertain to traffic on Google Search & other properties, while impressions and cost-per-impression pertain to traffic on our Google Network properties.
Paid clicks represent engagement by users and include clicks on advertisements by end-users on Google search properties and other Google owned and operated properties including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play. Cost-per-click is defined as click-driven revenues divided by our total number of paid clicks and represents the average amount we charge advertisers for each engagement by users.
Impressions include impressions displayed to users on Google Network properties participating primarily in AdMob, AdSense, and Google Ad Manager. Cost-per-impression is defined as impression-based and click-based revenues divided by our total number of impressions, and represents the average amount we charge advertisers for each impression displayed to users.
As our business evolves, we periodically review, refine, and update our methodologies for monitoring, gathering, and counting the number of paid clicks and the number of impressions, and for identifying the revenues generated by the corresponding click and impression activity.
Fluctuations in our advertising revenues, as well as the change in paid clicks and cost-per-click on Google Search & other properties and the change in impressions and cost-per-impression on Google Network properties and the correlation between these items have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as:
• advertiser competition for keywords;
• changes in advertising quality, formats, delivery or policy;
• changes in device mix;
• seasonal fluctuations in internet usage, advertising expenditures, and underlying business trends, such as traditional retail seasonality; and
• traffic growth in emerging markets compared to more mature markets and across various verticals and channels.Google subscriptions, platforms, and devicesGoogle subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues are comprised of the following:• consumer subscriptions, which primarily include revenues from YouTube services, such as YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, and NFL Sunday Ticket, as well as Google One;
• platforms, which primarily include revenues from Google Play sales of apps and in-app purchases;• devices, which primarily include sales of the Pixel family of devices; and
• other products and services.32.
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Fluctuations in our Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as changes in customer usage and demand, number of subscribers, and the timing of product launches.Google Cloud
Google Cloud revenues are comprised of the following:• Google Cloud Platform, which generates consumption-based fees and subscriptions for infrastructure, platform, and other services. These services provide access to solutions such as AI offerings including our AI infrastructure, Vertex AI platform, and Gemini for Google Cloud; cybersecurity; and data and analytics;
• Google Workspace, which includes subscriptions for cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for enterprises, such as Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Meet, with integrated features like Gemini for Google Workspace; and• other enterprise services.Fluctuations in our Google Cloud revenues have been, and may continue to be, affected by factors in addition to the general factors described above, such as changes in customer usage and demand.Other BetsRevenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of healthcare-related services, and internet services.Costs and ExpensesOur cost structure has two components: cost of revenues and operating expenses. Our operating expenses include costs related to R&D, sales and marketing, and general and administrative functions. Certain of our costs and expenses, including those associated with the operation of our technical infrastructure as well as components of our operating expenses, are generally less variable in nature and may not correlate to changes in revenue. Additionally, fluctuations in employee compensation expenses may not directly correlate with changes in headcount, due to factors such as annual stock-based compensation (SBC) awards that generally vest over four years.Cost of Revenues
Cost of revenues is comprised of TAC and other costs of revenues.
• TAC includes:
◦ amounts paid to our distribution partners who make available our search access points and services. Our distribution partners include browser providers, mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers, and software developers; and
◦ amounts paid to Google Network partners primarily for ads displayed on their properties.
• Other cost of revenues primarily includes:◦ content acquisition costs, which are payments to content providers from whom we license video and other content for distribution, primarily related to YouTube (we pay fees to these content providers based on revenues generated, subscriber counts, or a flat fee);
◦ depreciation expense related to our technical infrastructure;
◦ employee compensation expenses related to our technical infrastructure and other operations such as content review and customer and product support;
◦ inventory and other costs related to the devices we sell; and
◦ other technical infrastructure operations costs, including network capacity, energy, and equipment costs.TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Network properties are significantly higher than TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Search & other properties, because most of the advertiser revenues from ads served on Google Network properties are paid as TAC to our Google Network partners.
Operating Expenses33.
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Alphabet Inc.Operating expenses are generally incurred during our normal course of business, which we categorize as either R&D, sales and marketing, or general and administrative.
The main components of our R&D expenses are:• depreciation;
• employee compensation expenses for engineering and technical employees responsible for R&D related to our existing and new products and services; and• third-party services fees primarily relating to consulting and outsourced services in support of our engineering and product development efforts.
The main components of our sales and marketing expenses are:• employee compensation expenses for employees engaged in sales and marketing, sales support, and certain customer service functions; and
• spend relating to our advertising and promotional activities in support of our products and services.The main components of our general and administrative expenses are:• employee compensation expenses for employees in finance, human resources, information technology, legal, and other administrative support functions;
• expenses relating to legal and other matters, including certain fines and settlements; and• third-party services fees, including audit, consulting, outside legal, and other outsourced administrative services.
Other Income (Expense), Net
OI&E, net primarily consists of interest income (expense), the effect of foreign currency exchange gains (losses), net gains (losses) and impairment on our marketable and non-marketable securities, performance fees, and income (loss) and impairment from our equity method investments.For additional information, including how we account for our investments and factors that can drive fluctuations in the value of our investments, see Note 1 and Note 3 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 as well as Item 7A Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes represents the estimated amount of federal, state, and foreign income taxes incurred in the U.S. and the many jurisdictions in which we operate. The provision includes the effect of reserve provisions and changes to reserves that are considered appropriate as well as the related net interest and penalties.
For additional information, including a reconciliation of the U.S. federal statutory rate to our effective tax rate, see Note 14 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.34.Table of Contents
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Executive Overview
The following table summarizes our consolidated financial results (in millions, except for per share information and percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024 $ Change % Change
Consolidated revenues $ 307,394 $ 350,018 $ 42,624 14 %Change in consolidated constant currency revenues (1)15 %
Cost of revenues $ 133,332 $ 146,306 $ 12,974 10 %
Operating expenses $ 89,769 $ 91,322 $ 1,553 2 %
Operating income $ 84,293 $ 112,390 $ 28,097 33 %
Operating margin 27 % 32 % 5 %
Other income (expense), net $ 1,424 $ 7,425 $ 6,001 421 %
Net income $ 73,795 $ 100,118 $ 26,323 36 %
Diluted EPS (2)
$ 5.80 $ 8.04 $ 2.24 39 %(1) See "Use of Non-GAAP Constant Currency Information" below for details relating to our use of constant currency information.(2) For additional information on the calculation of diluted EPS, see Note 12 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
• Revenues were $350.0 billion, an increase of 14% year over year, primarily driven by an increase in Google Services revenues of $32.4 billion, or 12%, and an increase in Google Cloud revenues of $10.1 billion, or 31%.
• Total constant currency revenues, which exclude the effect of hedging, increased 15% year over year.
• Cost of revenues wa s $146.3 billion, an increase of 10% year over year, primarily driven by increases in content acquisition costs, TAC, and depreciation expense.
• Operating expenses were $91.3 billion, an increase of 2% year over year, primarily driven by increases in de preciation expense, employee compensation expenses, and third-party services fees. These increases were partially offset by reductions in charges related to legal and other matters and charges related to our office space optimization efforts. The overall increase in employee compensation expenses was partially offset by a reduction in employee severance and related charges.Other Information:• Dividend payments to stockholders of Class A, Class B, and Class C shares, which were first paid in June 2024, were $3.5 billion, $519 million, and $3.3 billion, respectively, totaling $7.4 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024. For additional information, see Note 11 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
• Repurchases of Class A and Class C shares were $11.9 billion and $50.2 billion, respectively, totaling $62.0 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024. For additional information, see Note 11 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
• Employee severance and related charges for the year ended December 31, 2024 were $1.0 billion, a decrease of $1.1 billion as compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. Office space charges, including accelerated rent and accelerated depreciation, for the year ended December 31, 2024 were $796 million, a decrease of $1.3 billion as compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. Substantially all of these charges were included in Alphabet-level activities.
• Operating cash flow was $125.3 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024.
• Capital expenditures, which primarily reflected investments in technical infrastructure, were $52.5 billion for the year ended December 31, 2024.
• As of December 31, 2024, we had 183,323 employees.
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Revenues
The following table presents revenues by type (in millions):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
Google Search & other $ 175,033 $ 198,084
YouTube ads 31,510 36,147
Google Network 31,312 30,359
Google advertising 237,855 264,590Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices34,688 40,340
Google Services total 272,543 304,930
Google Cloud 33,088 43,229
Other Bets 1,527 1,648
Hedging gains (losses) 236 211
Total revenues $ 307,394 $ 350,018Google Services
Google advertising revenues
Google Search & otherGoogle Search & other revenues increased $23.1 billion from 2023 to 2024. The overall growth was driven by interrelated factors including increases in search queries resulting from growth in user adoption and usage on mobile devices; growth in advertiser spending; and improvements we have made in ad formats and delivery.YouTube adsYouTube ads revenues increased $4.6 billion from 2023 to 2024. The growth was driven by our brand advertising products followed by our direct response advertising products, both of which benefited from increased spending by our advertisers.Google NetworkGoogle Network revenues decreased $953 million from 2023 to 2024, primarily driven by a decrease in Google Ad Manager and AdMob revenues. Additionally, Google Network revenues were adversely affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates.Monetization MetricsThe following table presents changes in monetization metrics for Google Search & other revenues (paid clicks and cost-per-click) and Google Network revenues (impressions and cost-per-impression), expressed as a percentage, from 2023 to 2024:Google Search & otherPaid clicks change 5 %
Cost-per-click change 7 %Google Network
Impressions change(11) %Cost-per-impression change10 %Changes in paid clicks and impressions are driven by a number of interrelated factors, including changes in advertiser spending; ongoing product and policy changes; and, as it relates to paid clicks, fluctuations in search queries resulting from changes in user adoption and usage, primarily on mobile devices.
Changes in cost-per-click and cost-per-impression are driven by a number of interrelated factors including changes in device mix, geographic mix, advertiser spending, ongoing product and policy changes, product mix, property mix, and changes in foreign currency exchange rates.36.
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Alphabet Inc.Google subscriptions, platforms, and devicesGoogle subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenues increased $5.7 billion from 2023 to 2024. The growth was primarily driven by an increase in subscription revenues, largely from growth in the number of paid subscribers for YouTube services followed by Google One.Google CloudGoogle Cloud revenues increased $10.1 billion from 2023 to 2024 primarily driven by growth in Google Cloud Platform largely from infrastructure services.Revenues by Geography
The following table presents revenues by geography as a percentage of revenues, determined based on the addresses of our customers:
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
United States 47 % 49 %
EMEA 30 % 29 %
APAC 17 % 16 %Other Americas 6 % 6 %Hedging gains (losses) 0 % 0 %For additional information, see Note 2 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Use of Non-GAAP Constant Currency Information
International revenues, which represent a significant portion of our revenues, are generally transacted in multiple currencies and therefore are affected by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.
The effect of currency exchange rates on our business is an important factor in understanding period-to-period comparisons. We use non-GAAP constant currency revenues ("constant currency revenues") and non-GAAP percentage change in constant currency revenues ("percentage change in constant currency revenues") for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. We believe the presentation of results on a constant currency basis in addition to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) results helps improve the ability to understand our performance, because it excludes the effects of foreign currency volatility that are not indicative of our core operating results.
Constant currency information compares results between periods as if exchange rates had remained constant period over period. We define constant currency revenues as revenues excluding the effect of foreign currency exchange rate movements ("FX Effect") as well as hedging activities, which are recognized at the consolidated level. We use constant currency revenues to determine the constant currency revenue percentage change on a year-on-year basis. Constant currency revenues are calculated by translating current period revenues using prior year comparable period exchange rates, as well as excluding any hedging effects realized in the current period.
Constant currency revenue percentage change is calculated by determining the change in current period revenues over prior year comparable period revenues where current period foreign currency revenues are translated using prior year comparable period exchange rates and hedging effects are excluded from revenues of both periods.
These results should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, results reported in accordance with GAAP. Results on a constant currency basis, as we present them, may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies and are not a measure of performance presented in accordance with GAAP.37.
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Alphabet Inc.The following table presents the foreign currency exchange effect on international revenues and total revenues (in millions, except percentages):Year Ended December 31, 2024% Change from Prior Period
Year Ended December 31, Less FX Effect Constant Currency Revenues As Reported Less Hedging Effect Less FX Effect Constant Currency Revenues2023 2024
United States $ 146,286 $ 170,447 $ 0 $ 170,447 17 % 0 % 17 %
EMEA 91,038 102,127 41 102,086 12 % 0 % 12 %
APAC 51,514 56,815 (1,369) 58,184 10 % (3) % 13 %
Other Americas 18,320 20,418 (1,608) 22,026 11 % (9) % 20 %Revenues, excluding hedging effect307,158 349,807 (2,936) 352,743 14 % (1) % 15 %
Hedging gains (losses) 236 211Total revenues (1)$ 307,394 $ 350,018 $ 352,743 14 % 0 % (1) % 15 %
(1) Total constant currency revenues of $352.7 billion for 2024 increased $45.6 billion compared to $307.2 billion in revenues, excluding hedging effect, for 2023.
EMEA revenue growth was not materially affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, as the effect of the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Turkish lira was offset by the U.S. dollar weakening relative to the British pound and the euro.APAC revenue growth was unfavorably affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, primarily due to the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Japanese yen.Other Americas revenue growth was unfavorably affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, primarily due to the U.S. dollar strengthening relative to the Argentine peso and the Brazilian real.Costs and Expenses
Cost of Revenues
The following table presents cost of revenues, including TAC (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
TAC $ 50,886 $ 54,900
Other cost of revenues 82,446 91,406
Total cost of revenues $ 133,332 $ 146,306
Total cost of revenues as a percentage of revenues 43 % 42 %
Cost of revenues increased $13.0 billion from 2023 to 2024 due to an increase in other cost of revenues and TAC of $9.0 billion and $4.0 billion, res pectively.
The increase in TAC from 2023 to 2024 was largely due to an increase in TAC paid to distribution partners, primarily driven by growth in revenues subject to TAC. The TAC rate decreased from 21.4% to 20.7% from 2023 to 2024 primarily due to a revenue mix shift from Google Network properties to Google Search & other properties. The TAC rate on Google Search & other revenues increased from 2023 to 2024 primarily due to increases related to mobile searches, which carries higher TAC because more mobile searches are channeled through paid access points. The TAC rate on Google Network revenues was substantially consistent from 2023 to 2024.
The increase in other cost of revenues from 2023 to 2024 was primarily due to increases in content acquisition costs, largely for YouTube, depreciation expense, and other technical infrastructure operations costs.Research and Development
The following table presents R&D expenses (in millions, except percentages):38.
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Research and development expenses $ 45,427 $ 49,326
Research and development expenses as a percentage of revenues 15 % 14 %
R&D expenses increased $3.9 billion from 2023 to 2024, primarily driven by increases in employee compensation expenses of $1.5 billion, depreciation expense of $1.4 billion, and third-party services fees of $698 million, partially offset by a reduction in charges related to our office space optimization efforts of $640 million. The increase in employee compensation expenses was primarily driven by a $1.3 billion increase in SBC expenses, which includes the reduction in valuation-based compensation liabilities related to certain Other Bets recognized in the prior year comparable period, partially offset by a $537 million decrease in severance and related charges.Sales and Marketing
The following table presents sales and marketing expenses (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
Sales and marketing expenses $ 27,917 $ 27,808
Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenues 9 % 8 %
Sales and marketing expenses decreased $109 million from 2023 to 2024, due to a combination of factors, none of which were individually significant.General and Administrative
The following table presents general and administrative expenses (in millions, except percentages):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
General and administrative expenses $ 16,425 $ 14,188
General and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenues 5 % 4 %
General and administrative expenses decreased $2.2 billion from 2023 to 2024, primarily driven by a reduction in charges related to legal and other matters of $1.3 billion and a decrease in employee compensation expenses of $285 million, primarily due to a decrease in average headcount, in addition to a combination of factors, none of which were individually significant.Segment ProfitabilityWe report our segment results as Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets. Additionally, certain costs are not allocated to our segments because they represent Alphabet-level activities. For further details on our segments, see Part I, Item 1 Business and Note 15 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.The following table presents segment operating income (loss) (in millions).
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024Operating income (loss):Google Services $ 95,858 $ 121,263
Google Cloud 1,716 6,112
Other Bets (4,095) (4,444)Alphabet-level activities (1)(9,186) (10,541)
Total income from operations $ 84,293 $ 112,390
(1) In addition to the costs included in Alphabet-level activities, hedging gains (losses) related to revenue were $236 million and $211 million in 2023 and 2024 , respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024 , Alphabet-level activities included substantially all of the charges related to employee severance and our office spa ce charges.
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Alphabet Inc.Google ServicesGoogle Services operating income increased $25.4 billion from 2023 to 2024. The increase in operating income was primarily driven by an increase in revenues, partially offset by increases in content acquisition costs and TAC. Additionally, a reduction in employee compensation expenses contributed to the increase in operating income.Google CloudGoogle Cloud operating income increased $4.4 billion from 2023 to 2024. The increase in operating income was primarily driven by an increase in revenues, partially offset by increases in usage costs for technical infrastructure as well as employee compensation expenses, largely driven by headcount growth.Other BetsOther Bets operating loss increased $349 million from 2023 to 2024. The increase in operating loss was primarily due to an increase in expenses, largely driven by employee compensation expenses in addition to a combination of factors, none of which were individually significant. The increase in employee compensation expenses was primarily as a result of the reduction in valuation-based compensation liabilities related to certain Other Bets recognized in the prior year comparable period.Other Income (Expense), Net
The following table presents OI&E, (in millions):Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
Interest income $ 3,865 $ 4,482Interest expense(308) (268)
Foreign currency exchange gain (loss), net (1,238) (409)
Gain (loss) on debt securities, net (1,215) (1,043)
Gain (loss) on equity securities, net 392 3,714
Performance fees 257 218
Income (loss) and impairment from equity method investments, net (628) (188)
Other 299 919
Other income (expense), net $ 1,424 $ 7,425
OI&E, net increased $6.0 billion from 2023 to 2024 primarily due to an increase in net gains on equity securities and a decrease in net losses on foreign currency exchange. The net gains on equity securities were primarily due to net unrealized gains on non-marketable equity securities driven by fair value adjustments related to observable transactions, partially offset by a decrease in net unrealized gains on marketable equity securities due to market-driven changes. Foreign currency exchange net losses decreased compared to the prior year primarily due to prior year losses in unhedged currencies.
In January 2025, we recognized an $8.0 billion unrealized gain on our non-marketable equity securities related to our investment in a private company. The unrealized gain reflects an increase in the fair value measurement of our investment following an observable transaction in January 2025.
For additional information, see Note 3 and Note 7 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Provision for Income TaxesThe following table presents provision for income taxes (in millions, except effective tax rate):Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
Income before provision for income taxes $ 85,717 $ 119,815
Provision for income taxes $ 11,922 $ 19,697
Effective tax rate 13.9 % 16.4 %
The effective tax rate increased from 2023 to 2024. This increase was primarily due to a one-time adjustment for tax rule changes issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that affected the 2023 rate related to U.S. federal foreign tax credits, as well as a separate rule change with guidance on the capitalization and amortization of R&D
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expenses. Additionally, a decrease in the 2024 U.S. federal Foreign Derived Intangible Income tax deduction contributed to an increase in the effective tax rate. These factors were partially offset by an increase in stock-based compensation-related tax benefits in 2024.
The OECD is coordinating negotiations among more than 140 countries with the goal of achieving consensus around substantial changes to international tax policies, including the implementation of a minimum global effective tax rate of 15%. Some countries have already implemented the legislation effective January 1, 2024, and we expect others to follow, however this did not have a material effect on our income tax provision for the 2024 fiscal year.Financial Condition
Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Marketable SecuritiesAs of December 31, 2024 , we had $95.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities. Ca sh equivalents and marketable securities a re comprised of time deposits, money market funds, highly liquid government bonds, corporate debt securities, mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities, and marketable equity securities.Sources, Uses of Cash and Related Trends
Our principal sources of liquidity are cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, as well as the cash flow that we generate from operations. The primary use of capital continues to be to invest for the long-term growth of the business. We regularly evaluate our cash and capital structure, including the size, pace, and form of capital return to stockholders.The following table presents our cash flows (in millions):
Year Ended December 31,2023 2024
Net cash provided by operating activities $ 101,746 $ 125,299
Net cash used in investing activities $ (27,063) $ (45,536)
Net cash used in financing activities $ (72,093) $ (79,733)Cash Provided by Operating ActivitiesOur largest source of cash provided by operations are advertising revenues generated by Google Search & other properties, Google Network properties, and YouTube properties. In Google Services, we also generate cash through consumer subscriptions, the sale of apps and in-app purchases, and devices. In Google Cloud, we generate cash through consumption-based fees and subscriptions for infrastructure, platform, applications, and other cloud services.Our primary uses of cash from operating activities include payments to distribution and Google Network partners, to employees for compensation, and to content providers. Other uses of cash from operating activities include payments to suppliers for devices, to tax authorities for income taxes, and other general corporate expenditures.Net cash provided by operating activities increased from 2023 to 2024 due to an increase in cash received from customers, partially offset by an increase in cash payments for cost of revenues and operating expenses.Cash Used in Investing Activities
Cash provided by investing activities consists primarily of maturities and sales of investments in marketable and non-marketable securities. Cash used in investing activities consists primarily of purchases of marketable and non-marketable securities, purchases of property and equipment, and payments for acquisitions.Net cash used in investing activities increased from 2023 to 2024 primarily due to an increase in purchases of property and equipment and purchases of marketable securities, partially offset by increases in maturities and sales of marketable securities. The increase in purchases of property and equipment is primarily driven by investments in technical infrastructure.Cash Used in Financing ActivitiesCash provided by financing activities consists primarily of proceeds from issuance of debt and proceeds from the sale of interests in consolidated entities. Cash used in financing activities consists primarily of repurchases of stock, net payments related to stock-based award activities, payment of dividends, and repayments of debt.
Net cash used in financing activities increased from 2023 to 2024 due to dividend payments and net payments related to stock-based award activities, partially offset by an increase in proceeds from issuance of debt, net of repayments.
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Alphabet Inc.Liquidity and Material Cash RequirementsWe expect exist ing cash, cash equivalents, short-term marketable securities, and cash flows from operations and financing activities to continue to be sufficient to fund our operating activities and cash commitments for investing and financing activities for at least the next 12 months, and thereafter for the foreseeable future.Capital Expenditures and LeasesWe make investments in land, buildings, and servers and network equipment through purchases of property and equipment and lease arrangements to provide capacity for the growth of our services and products.Capital Expenditures
Our capital investments in property and equipment consist primarily of the following major categories:• technical infrastructure, which consists of our investments in servers and network equipment for computing, storage, and networking requirements for ongoing business activities, including AI, and data center land and building construction; and• office facilities, ground-up development projects, and building improvements (also referred to as "fit-outs").Assets not yet in service are those that are not ready for our intended use, including assets in the process of construction or assembly, and consists primarily of technical infrastructure. The time frame from date of purchase to placement in service of these assets may extend from months to years. For example, our data center construction projects are generally multi-year projects with multiple phases, where we acquire land and buildings, construct buildings, and secure and install servers and network equipment.
During the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, we spent $32.3 billion and $52.5 billion on capital expenditures, respectively. We expect to increase, relative to 2024, our i nvestment in our technical infrastructure, including servers, network equipment, and data centers, to support the growth of our business and our long-term initiatives, in particular in support of AI products and services. Depreciation of our property and equipment commences when the deployment of such assets are completed and are ready for our intended use. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, our depreciation on property and equipment was $11.9 billion and $15.3 billion, respectively.LeasesFor the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, we recognized additional operating lease assets of $2.9 billion and $2.5 billion, and additional finance lease assets of $564 million and $313 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2024, the amount of total future lease payments under operating leases, which had a weighted average remaining lease term of 7.8 years, was $17.0 billion, of which $3.2 billion is short-term, and total future lease payments under finance leases, which had a weighted average remaining lease term of 10.4 years, was $1.9 billion, of which $257 million is short-term. As of December 31, 2024, we have entered into leases that have not yet commenced with future short-term and long-term lease payments of $773 million and $6.5 billion, respectively, that are not yet recorded on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. These leases will commence between 2025 and 2028 with non-cancelable lease terms of one to 25 years.
For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, our operating lease expenses (including variable lease costs) were $4.5 billion and $4.7 billion, respectively. Finance lease costs were $504 million and $444 million for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively. For additional information, see Note 4 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.FinancingWe have a short-term debt financing program of up to $10.0 billion through the issuance of commercial paper. Net proceeds from this program are used for general corporate purposes. As of December 31, 2024, we ha d $2.3 billion of short-term commercial paper outstanding.
As of December 31, 2024, we had senior unsecured notes outstanding with a total carrying value of $11.9 billion with short-term and long-term future interest payments of $197 million and $3.4 billion, respectively.
As of December 31, 2024, we had $10.0 billion of revolving credit facilities, $4.0 billion expiring in April 2025 and $6.0 billion expiring in April 2028. The interest rates for all credit facilities are determined based on a formula using certain market rates, as well as our progress toward the achievement of certain sustainability goals . No amounts have been borrowed under the credit facilities. For additional information, see Note 6 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
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Alphabet Inc.We primarily utilize contract manufacturers for the assembly of our servers used in our technical infrastructure and devices we sell. We have agreements where we may purchase components directly from suppliers and then supply these components to contract manufacturers for use in the assembly of the servers and devices. Certain of these arrangements result in a portion of the cash received from and paid to the contract manufacturers to be presented as financing activities in the Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Share Repurchase ProgramDuring 2024, we repurchased and subsequently retired 379 million shares for $62.0 billion .
In April 2024, the Board of Directors of Alphabet authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares. As of December 31, 2024 , $44.7 billion remained available for Class A and Class C share repurchases.The following table presents Class A and Class C shares repurchased and subsequently retired (in millions):Year Ended December 31, 2023 Year Ended December 31, 2024Shares Amount Shares AmountClass A share repurchases 78 $ 9,316 73 $ 11,855
Class C share repurchases 450 52,868 306 50,192Total share repurchases (1)528 $ 62,184 379 $ 62,047
(1) Shares repurchased include unsettled repurchases.For additional information, see Note 11 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.Dividend Program
During the year ended December 31, 2024 total cash dividends, which were first paid in June 2024, were $3.5 billion, $519 million, and $3.3 billion for Class A, Class B, and Class C shares, respectively.
The company intends to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future, subject to review and approval by the company’s Board of Directors in its sole discretion.European Commission FinesIn 2017, 2018, and 2019, the European Commission (EC) announced decisions that certain actions taken by Google infringed European competition law and imposed fines of €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion as of June 27, 2017), €4.3 billion ($5.1 billion as of June 30, 2018), and €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion as of March 20, 2019), respectively.
In September 2022, the General Court affirmed the EC decision but reduced the 2018 fine from €4.3 billion to €4.1 billion. We subsequently appealed the General Court's affirmation of the EC decision with the European Court of Justice, which remains pending.
In September 2024, the European Court of Justice rejected our appeal of the 2017 decision and upheld the €2.4 billion fine. In the third quarter of 2024, we made a cash payment of $3.0 billion for the 2017 shopping fine.
In September 2024, the EU's General Court overturned the 2019 decision and annulled the €1.5 billion fine. The EC has appealed the General Court's decision to the European Court of Justice.
We included the outstanding EC fines, including any under appeal, in accrued expenses and other current liabilities on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. For additional information, see Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.TaxesAs of December 31, 2024 , we had income taxes payable of $2.7 billion related to a one-time transition tax payable incurred as a result of the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is due in 2025. We also had long-term taxes payable of $8.8 billion primarily related to uncertain tax positions as of December 31, 2024 .Purchase Commitments and Other Contractual ObligationsAs of December 31, 2024, we had material purchase commitments and other contractual obligations of $55.4 billion, of which $32.5 billion was short-term. These amounts primarily consist of purchase orders for certain technical infrastructure as well as the non-cancelable portion or the minimum cancellation fee in certain agreements related to commitments to purchase licenses, including content licenses, inventory, and network capacity. For those agreements
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with variable terms, we do not estimate the non-cancelable obligation beyond any minimum quantities and/or pricing as of December 31, 2024. In certain instances, the amount of our contractual obligations may change based on the expected timing of order fulfillment from our suppliers. For more information related to our content licenses, see Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.In addition, we regularly enter into multi-year, non-cancellable agreements to purchase renewable energy and energy attributes, such as renewable energy certificates. These agreements do not include a minimum dollar commitment. The amounts to be paid under these agreements are based on the actual volumes to be generated and are not readily determinable.
Critical Accounting Estimates
We prepare our consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAP. In doing so, we have to make estimates and assumptions. Our critical accounting estimates are those estimates that involve a significant level of uncertainty at the time the estimate was made, and changes in them have had or are reasonably likely to have a material effect on our financial condition or results of operations. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially from our estimates. We base our estimates on past experience and other assumptions that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances, and we evaluate these estimates on an ongoing basis. We have reviewed our critical accounting estimates with the Audit and Compliance Committee of our Board of Directors.
For a summary of significant accounting policies and the effect on our financial statements, see Note 1 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Fair Value Measurements of Non-Marketable Equity Securities
We measure certain financial instruments at fair value on a nonrecurring basis, consisting primarily of our non-marketable equity securities. These investments are accounted for under the measurement alternative method ("the measurement alternative") and are measured at cost, less impairment, subject to upward and downward adjustments resulting from observable price changes for identical or similar investments of the same issuer. These adjustments require quantitative assessments of the fair value of our securities, which may require the use of unobservable inputs. Adjustments are determined primarily based on a market approach as of the transaction date and involve the use of estimates using the best information available, which may include cash flow projections or other available market data.Non-marketable equity securities are also evaluated for impairment, based on qualitative factors including the companies' financial and liquidity position and access to capital resources, among others. When indicators of impairment exist, we prepare quantitative measurements of the fair value of our equity investments using a market approach or an income approach, which requires judgment and the use of unobservable inputs, including discount rates, investee revenues and costs, and comparable market data of private and public companies, among others. When the quantitative remeasurements of fair value indicate an impairment exists, we write down the investment to its current fair value.We also have compensation arrangements with payouts based on realized returns from certain investments, i.e. performance fees. We record compensation expense based on the estimated payouts on an ongoing basis, which may result in expense recognized before investment returns are realized and compensation is paid and may require the use of unobservable inputs.
Property and EquipmentWe assess the reasonableness of the useful lives of our property and equipment periodically as well as when other changes occur, such as when there are changes to ongoing business operations, changes in the planned use and utilization of assets, or technological advancements, that could indicate a change in the period over which we expect to benefit from the asset.Income Taxes
We are subject to income taxes in the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in evaluating our uncertain tax positions and determining our provision for income taxes.Recording an uncertain tax position involves various qualitative considerations, including evaluation of comparable and resolved tax exposures, applicability of tax laws, and likelihood of settlement. We evaluate uncertain tax positions periodically, considering changes in facts and circumstances, such as new regulations or recent judicial opinions, as well as the status of audit activities by taxing authorities. Although we believe we have adequately reserved for our uncertain tax positions, no assurance can be given that the final tax outcome of these matters will not be different. To the extent that the final tax outcome of these matters is different than the amounts recorded, such44.
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Alphabet Inc.differences will affect the provision for income taxes and the effective tax rate in the period in which such determination is made.
The provision for income taxes includes the effect of reserve provisions and changes to reserves as well as the related net interest and penalties. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by the IRS and other tax authorities which may assert assessments against us. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations and assessments to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes.
Loss Contingencies
We are subject to claims, lawsuits, regulatory and government inquiries and investigations, other proceedings, and consent orders involving competition, intellectual property, data privacy and security, tax and related compliance, labor and employment, commercial disputes, content generated by our users, goods and services offered by advertisers or publishers using our platforms, personal injury, consumer protection, and other matters. Certain of these matters include speculative claims for substantial or indeterminate amounts of damages. We record a liability when we believe that it is probable that a loss has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. If we determine that a loss is reasonably possible and the loss or range of loss can be estimated, we disclose the possible loss in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
We evaluate, on a regular basis, developments in our legal matters that could affect the amount of liability that has been previously accrued, and the matters and related reasonably possible losses disclosed, and make adjustments and changes to our disclosures. Significant judgment is required to determine both the likelihood and the estimated amount of a loss related to such matters. Until the final resolution of such matters, there may be an exposure to loss in excess of the amount recorded, and such amounts could be material.