ALPHABET AND GOOGLE RECENT SCANDALS

Sexual misconduct

Schmidt was named in the lawsuit accusing the company of covering up harassment by multiple executives.

Reports emerged last month that former search executive Amit Singhal was forced to resign after an employee claimed he groped her at an off-campus event.

It was claimed he was paid $35million in a severance package.

Prior to this, an investigation it was uncovered a $150 million payout to Android creator Andy Rubin amid a sexual misconduct inquiry.

YouTube content controversy

Companies including Nestle and the makers of Fortnite pulled their adverts from YouTube after a 'soft-core paedophile ring' was discovered on the site.

Videos of youngsters, sometimes in compromising positions, were being inundated with comments by paedophiles and attracting tens of millions of views, it was claimed.

Some of the disturbing footage, reportedly featuring girls as young as five, appeared alongside advertising from companies such as Disney and Nestle, according to a US-based vlogger.

Some of the videos appeared alongside advertising from companies such as Disney and Nestle.

Data

In July of 2018 it was revealed that data privacy practices of Gmail means that it was common for third-party developers to read the contents of users' Gmail messages.

A new investigation in August 2018 found that some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking - even when Location History has been paused.

It announced in October last year that there was a software bug in Google+ which meant personal information of 'hundreds of thousands' of users was exposed.

The issue reportedly affected users on the site between 2015 and March 2018.

EU fines

On March 20, 2019 Google was fined £1.27bn for breaching EU competition laws.

On July 18 2018 EU antitrust regulators handed down a separate $5 billion (£3.8bn / €4.3bn) fine to Google after a three-year long investigation.

The EU first fined Google $2.84 billion (£2.1bn / €2.42bn) for thwarting rivals of shopping comparison websites.

The European Commission said Google had an unfair advantage by pre-installing its Chrome browser and Google search app on Android smartphones and notebooks.

Military collaboration and uses of AI

Google received criticism over its Project Maven, a project with the US military to use its AI to control drones destined for enemy territory.

Google decided not to renew this contract in June 2018 following protests from some employees.

It established an internal AI ethics board in 2014 when it acquired DeepMind but this has been shrouded in secrecy with no details ever released about who it includes.

Ethics board shambles

Google disbanded an AI ethics board less than a week after it formed following outrage from staff.

The liberal workforce objected to the inclusion of Kay Coles James, president of conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation.

Activists lashed out at Ms Cole, who was selected by the search giant for her role so the council could offer a range of backgrounds and experience, saying she is 'anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant'.