Author Archives: Kent Walker

Why we’re committing $10 billion to advance cybersecurity

We welcomed the opportunity to participate in President Biden’s White House Cyber Security Meeting today, and appreciated the chance to share our recommendations to advance this important agenda. The meeting comes at a timely moment, as widespread cyberattacks continue to exploit vulnerabilities targeting people, organizations, and governments around the world.


That’s why today, we are announcing that we will invest $10 billion over the next five years to strengthen cybersecurity, including expanding zero-trust programs, helping secure the software supply chain, and enhancing open-source security. We are also pledging, through the Google Career Certificate program, to train 100,000 Americans in fields like IT Support and Data Analytics, learning in-demand skills including data privacy and security. 


Governments and businesses are at a watershed moment in addressing cybersecurity. Cyber attacks are increasingly endangering valuable data and critical infrastructure. While we welcome increased measures to reinforce cybersecurity, governments and companies are both facing key challenges: 


First, organizations continue to depend on vulnerable legacy infrastructure and software, rather than adopting modern IT and security practices. Too many governments still rely on legacy vendor contracts that limit competition and choice, inflate costs, and create privacy and security risks. 


Second, nation-state actors, cybercriminals and other malicious actors continue to target weaknesses in software supply chains and many vendors don’t have the tools or expertise to stop them. 


Third, countries simply don’t have enough people trained to anticipate and deal with these threats. 


For the past two decades, Google has made security the cornerstone of our product strategy. We don’t just plug security holes, we work to eliminate entire classes of threats for consumers and businesses whose work depends on our services. We keep more users safe than anyone else in the world — blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages, and potential cyber attacks. We’ve published over 160 academic research papers on computer security, privacy, and abuse prevention, and we warn other software companies of weaknesses in their systems. And dedicated teams like our Threat Analysis Group work to counter government-backed hacking and attacks against Google and our users, making the internet safer for everyone.


Extending the zero-trust security model 

We’re one of the pioneers inzero-trust computing, in which no person, device, or network enjoys inherent trust.  Trust that allows access to information must be earned.  We’ve learned a lot about both the power and the challenges of running this model at scale. 


Implemented properly, zero-trust computing provides the highest level of security for organizations.  We support the White House effort to deploy this model across the federal government. 


As government and industry work together to develop and implement zero-trust solutions for employee access to corporate assets, we also need to apply the approach to production environments. This is necessary to address events like Solarwinds, where attackers used access to the production environment to compromise dozens of outside entities. The U.S. government can encourage adoption by expanding zero-trust guidelines and reference architecture language in the Executive Order implementation process to include production environments, which in addition to application segmentation substantially improves an organization’s defense in depth strategy. 


Securing the software supply chain 

Following the Solarwinds attack, the software world gained a deeper understanding of the real risks and ramifications of supply chain attacks. Today, the vast majority of modern software development makes use of open source software, including software incorporated in many aspects of critical infrastructure and national security systems. Despite this, there is no formal requirement or standard for maintaining the security of that software. Most of the work that is done to enhance the security of open source software, including fixing known vulnerabilities, is done on an ad hoc basis. 


That’s why we worked with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to develop and release Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA or “salsa”), a proven framework for securing the software supply chain. In our view, wide support for and adoption of the SLSA framework will raise the security bar for the entire software ecosystem. 


To further advance our work and the broader community’s work in this space, we committed to invest in the expansion of the application of our SLSA framework to protect the key components of open-source software widely used by many organizations. We also pledged to provide $100 million to support third-party foundations, like OpenSSF, that manage open source security priorities and help fix vulnerabilities.


Strengthening the digital security skills of the American workforce

Robust cybersecurity ultimately depends on having the people to implement it. That includes people with digital skills capable of designing and executing cybersecurity solutions, as well as promoting awareness of cybersecurity risks and protocols among the broader population. In short, we need more and better computer security education and training.  


Over the next three years, we're pledging to help 100,000 Americans earn Google Career Certificates in fields like IT Support and Data Analytics to learn in-demand skills including data privacy and security. The certificates are industry-recognized and supported credentials that equip Americans with the skills they need to get high-paying, high-growth jobs. To date, more than half of our graduates have come from backgrounds underserved in tech (Black, Latinx, veteran, or female). 46% of our graduates come from the lowest income tertile in the country. And the results are strong: 82% of our graduates report a positive career impact within six months of graduation. Additionally, we will train over 10 million Americans in digital skills from basic to advanced by 2023.


Leading the world in cybersecurity is critical to our national security. Today’s meeting at the White House was both an acknowledgment of the threats we face and a call to action to address them. It emphasized cybersecurity as a global imperative and encouraged new ways of thinking and partnering across government, industry and academia. We look forward to working with the Administration and others to define and drive a new era in cybersecurity. Our collective safety, economic growth, and future innovation depend on it.


Why we’re committing $10 billion to advance cybersecurity

We welcomed the opportunity to participate in President Biden’s White House Cyber Security Meeting today, and appreciated the chance to share our recommendations to advance this important agenda. The meeting comes at a timely moment, as widespread cyberattacks continue to exploit vulnerabilities targeting people, organizations, and governments around the world.


That’s why today, we are announcing that we will invest $10 billion over the next five years to strengthen cybersecurity, including expanding zero-trust programs, helping secure the software supply chain, and enhancing open-source security. We are also pledging, through the Google Career Certificate program, to train 100,000 Americans in fields like IT Support and Data Analytics, learning in-demand skills including data privacy and security. 


Governments and businesses are at a watershed moment in addressing cybersecurity. Cyber attacks are increasingly endangering valuable data and critical infrastructure. While we welcome increased measures to reinforce cybersecurity, governments and companies are both facing key challenges: 


First, organizations continue to depend on vulnerable legacy infrastructure and software, rather than adopting modern IT and security practices. Too many governments still rely on legacy vendor contracts that limit competition and choice, inflate costs, and create privacy and security risks. 


Second, nation-state actors, cybercriminals and other malicious actors continue to target weaknesses in software supply chains and many vendors don’t have the tools or expertise to stop them. 


Third, countries simply don’t have enough people trained to anticipate and deal with these threats. 


For the past two decades, Google has made security the cornerstone of our product strategy. We don’t just plug security holes, we work to eliminate entire classes of threats for consumers and businesses whose work depends on our services. We keep more users safe than anyone else in the world — blocking malware, phishing attempts, spam messages, and potential cyber attacks. We’ve published over 160 academic research papers on computer security, privacy, and abuse prevention, and we warn other software companies of weaknesses in their systems. And dedicated teams like our Threat Analysis Group work to counter government-backed hacking and attacks against Google and our users, making the internet safer for everyone.


Extending the zero-trust security model 

We’re one of the pioneers inzero-trust computing, in which no person, device, or network enjoys inherent trust.  Trust that allows access to information must be earned.  We’ve learned a lot about both the power and the challenges of running this model at scale. 


Implemented properly, zero-trust computing provides the highest level of security for organizations.  We support the White House effort to deploy this model across the federal government. 


As government and industry work together to develop and implement zero-trust solutions for employee access to corporate assets, we also need to apply the approach to production environments. This is necessary to address events like Solarwinds, where attackers used access to the production environment to compromise dozens of outside entities. The U.S. government can encourage adoption by expanding zero-trust guidelines and reference architecture language in the Executive Order implementation process to include production environments, which in addition to application segmentation substantially improves an organization’s defense in depth strategy. 


Securing the software supply chain 

Following the Solarwinds attack, the software world gained a deeper understanding of the real risks and ramifications of supply chain attacks. Today, the vast majority of modern software development makes use of open source software, including software incorporated in many aspects of critical infrastructure and national security systems. Despite this, there is no formal requirement or standard for maintaining the security of that software. Most of the work that is done to enhance the security of open source software, including fixing known vulnerabilities, is done on an ad hoc basis. 


That’s why we worked with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to develop and release Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA or “salsa”), a proven framework for securing the software supply chain. In our view, wide support for and adoption of the SLSA framework will raise the security bar for the entire software ecosystem. 


To further advance our work and the broader community’s work in this space, we committed to invest in the expansion of the application of our SLSA framework to protect the key components of open-source software widely used by many organizations. We also pledged to provide $100 million to support third-party foundations, like OpenSSF, that manage open source security priorities and help fix vulnerabilities.


Strengthening the digital security skills of the American workforce

Robust cybersecurity ultimately depends on having the people to implement it. That includes people with digital skills capable of designing and executing cybersecurity solutions, as well as promoting awareness of cybersecurity risks and protocols among the broader population. In short, we need more and better computer security education and training.  


Over the next three years, we're pledging to help 100,000 Americans earn Google Career Certificates in fields like IT Support and Data Analytics to learn in-demand skills including data privacy and security. The certificates are industry-recognized and supported credentials that equip Americans with the skills they need to get high-paying, high-growth jobs. To date, more than half of our graduates have come from backgrounds underserved in tech (Black, Latinx, veteran, or female). 46% of our graduates come from the lowest income tertile in the country. And the results are strong: 82% of our graduates report a positive career impact within six months of graduation. Additionally, we will train over 10 million Americans in digital skills from basic to advanced by 2023.


Leading the world in cybersecurity is critical to our national security. Today’s meeting at the White House was both an acknowledgment of the threats we face and a call to action to address them. It emphasized cybersecurity as a global imperative and encouraged new ways of thinking and partnering across government, industry and academia. We look forward to working with the Administration and others to define and drive a new era in cybersecurity. Our collective safety, economic growth, and future innovation depend on it.


An update on our progress in responsible AI innovation

Over the past year, responsibly developed AI has transformed health screenings, supportedfact-checking to battle misinformation and save lives, predicted Covid-19 cases to support public health, and protected wildlife after bushfires. Developing AI in a way that gets it right for everyone requires openness, transparency, and a clear focus on understanding the societal implications. That is why we were among the first companies to develop and publish AI Principles and why, each year, we share updates on our progress.

Building on previous AI Principles updates in 2018,  2019, and 2020, today we’re providing our latest overview of what we’ve learned, and how we’re applying these learnings.


Internal Education

In the last year, to ensure our teams have clarity from day one, we’ve added an introduction to our AI Principles for engineers and incoming hires in technical roles. The course presents each of the Principles as well as the applications we will not pursue.

Integrating our Principles into the work we do with enterprise customers is key, so we’ve continued to make our AI Principles in Practice training mandatory for customer-facing Cloud employees. A version of this training is available to all Googlers.

There is no single way to apply the AI Principles to specific features and product development. Training must consider not only the technology and data, but also where and how AI is used. To offer a more comprehensive approach to implementing the AI Principles, we’ve been developing opportunities for Googlers to share their points of view on the responsible development of future technologies, such as the AI Principles Ethics Fellowship for Google’s Employee Resource Groups. Fellows receive AI Principles training and craft hypothetical case studies to inform how Google prioritizes socially beneficial applications. This inaugural year, 27 fellows selected from 191 applicants from around the world wrote and presented case studies on topics such as genome datasets and a Covid-19 content moderation workflow.

Other programs include a bi-weekly Responsible AI Tech Talk Series featuring external experts, such as the Brookings Institution’s Dr. Nicol Turner Lee presenting on detecting and mitigating algorithmic bias.


Tools and Research

To bring together multiple teams working on technical tools and research, this year we formed the Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology organization. The basic and applied researchers in the organization are devoted to developing technology and best practices for the technical realization of the AI Principles guidance.

As discussed in our December 2020 End-of-Year report, we regularly release these tools to the public. Currently, researchers are developing Know Your Data (in beta) to help developers understand datasets with the goal of improving data quality, helping to mitigate fairness and bias issues.

Image of Know Your Data, a Responsible AI tool in beta

Know Your Data, a Responsible AI tool in beta

Product teams use these tools to evaluate their work’s alignment with the AI Principles. For example, the Portrait Light feature available in both Pixel’s Camera and Google Photos uses multiple machine learning components to instantly add realistic synthetic lighting to portraits. Using computational methods to achieve this effect, however, raised several responsible innovation challenges, including potentially reinforcing unfair bias (AI Principle #2) despite the goal of building a feature that works for all users. So the Portrait Light team generated a training dataset containing millions of photos based on an original set of photos of different people in a diversity of lighting environments, with their explicit consent. The engineering team used various Google Responsible AI tools to test proactively whether the ML models used in Portrait Light performed equitably across different audiences.

Our ongoing technical research related to responsible innovation in AI in the last 12 months has led to more than 200 research papers and articles that address AI Principles-related topics. These include exploring and mitigating data cascades; creating the first model-agnostic framework for partially local federated learning suitable for training and inference at scale; and analyzing the energy- and carbon-costs of training six recent ML models to reduce the carbon footprint of training an ML system by up to 99.9%.


Operationalizing the Principles

To help our teams put the AI Principles into practice, we deploy our decision-making process for reviewing new custom AI projects in development — from chatbots to newer fields such as affective technologies. These reviews are led by a multidisciplinary Responsible Innovation team, which draws on expertise in disciplines including trust and safety, human rights, public policy, law, sustainability, and product management. The team also advises product areas, on specific issues related to serving enterprise customers. Any Googler, at any level, is encouraged to apply for an AI Principles review of a project or planned product or service.

Teams can also request other Responsible Innovation services, such as informal consultations or product fairness testing with the Product Fairness (ProFair) team. ProFair tests products from the user perspective to investigate known issues and find new ones, similar to how an academic researcher would go about identifying fairness issues.

Our Google Cloud, Image Search, Next Billion Users and YouTube product teams have engaged with ProFair to test potential new projects for fairness. Consultations include collaborative testing scenarios, focus groups, and adversarial testing of ML models to address improving equity in data labels, fairness in language models, and bias in predictive text, among other issues. Recently, the ProFair team spent nine months consulting with Google researchers on creating an object recognition dataset for physical landmarks (such as buildings), developing criteria for how to choose which classes to recognize and how to determine the amount of training data per class in ways that would assign a fairer relevance score to each class.

Reviewers weigh the nature of the social benefit involved and whether it substantially exceeds potential challenges. For example, in the past year, reviewers decided not to publicly release ML models that can create photo-realistic synthetic faces made with generative adversarial networks (GANs), because of the risk of potential misuse by malicious actors to create “deepfakes” for misinformation purposes.

As another example, a research team requested a review of a new ML training dataset for computer vision fairness techniques that offered more specific attributes about people, such as perceived gender and age-range. The team worked with Open Images, an open data project containing ~9 million images spanning thousands of object categories and bounding box annotations for 600 classes. Reviewers weighed the risk of labeling the data with the sensitive labels of perceived gender presentation and age-range, and the societal benefit of these labels for fairness analysis and bias mitigation. Given these risks, reviewers required creation of a data card explaining the details and limitations of the project. We released the MIAP (More Inclusive Annotations for People) dataset in the Open Images Extended collection. The collection contains more complete bounding box annotations for the person class hierarchy in 100K images containing people. Each annotation is also labeled with fairness-related attributes. MIAP was accepted and presented at the 2021 Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society conference.


External Engagement

We remain committed to contributing to emerging international principles for responsible AI innovation. For example, we submitted a response to the European Commission consultation on the inception impact assessment on ethical and legal requirements for AI and feedback on NITI Aayog’s working document on Responsible Use of AI to guide national principles for India. We also supported the Singaporean government’s Guide to Job Redesign in the Age of AI, which outlines opportunities to optimize AI benefits by redesigning jobs and reskilling employees.

Our efforts to engage global audiences, from students to policymakers, center on educational programs and discussions to offer helpful and practical ML education, including:

  • A workshop on Federated Learning and Analytics, making all research talks and a TensorFlow Federated tutorial publicly available.
  • Machine Learning for Policy Leaders (ML4PL), a 2-hour virtual workshop on the basics of ML. To date, we’ve expanded this globally, reaching more than 350 policymakers across the EU, LatAm, APAC, and US.
  • A workshop co-hosted with the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on the Responsible Use of AI for Social Empowerment, exploring the potential of AI adoption in the government to address COVID-19, agricultural and environmental crises.

To support these workshops and events with actionable and equitable programming designed for long-term collaboration, over the past year we’ve helped launch:

  • AI for Social Good workshops, bringing together NGOs applying AI to tough challenges in their communities with academic experts and Google researchers to encourage collaborative AI solutions. So far we’ve supported more than 30 projects in Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa with expertise, funding and Cloud Credits.
  • Two collaborations with the U.S. National Science Foundation: one to support the National AI Research Institute for Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration with $5 million in funding, along with AI expertise, research collaborations and Cloud support; another to join other industry partners and federal agencies as part of a combined $40 million investment in academic research for Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation (NextG) Systems, in which Google will offer expertise, research collaborations, infrastructure and in-kind support to researchers.
  • Quarterly Equitable AI Research Roundtables (EARR), focused on the potential downstream harms of AI with experts from the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, PolicyLink, and Emory University School of Law.
  • MLCommons, a non-profit, which will administer MLPerf, a suite of benchmarks for Google and industry peers.


Committed to sharing tools and discoveries

In the three years since Google released our AI Principles, we’ve worked to integrate this ethical charter across our work — from the development of advanced technologies to business processes. As we learn and engage with people and organizations across society we’re committed to sharing tools, processes and discoveries with the global community. You’ll find many of these in our recently updated People + AI Research Guidebook and on the Google AI responsibilities site, which we update quarterly with case studies and other resources. 

How Google supports today’s critical cybersecurity efforts

The past six months have seen some of the most widespread and alarming cyber attacks against our digital infrastructure in history — against public utilities, private sector companies, government entities and people living in democracies around the world. Attacks by nation-states and criminals are increasingly brazen and effective, penetrating even widely used products and services that are supposed to keep you safe.

We are deeply concerned by these trends. Security is the cornerstone of our product strategy, and we’ve spent the last decade building infrastructure and designing products that implement security at scale: every day Gmail blocks more than 100 million phishing attempts that never reach you. Google Play Protect scans over 100 billion apps for malware and other issues. We strive to deliver the most trusted cloudin the industry.  And we have dedicated teams like Project Zero who focus on finding and fixing vulnerabilities across the web to make the internet safer for all of us. 

Our security-first approach builds on awareness of an evolving threat environment, industry-wide information sharing, and the leadership of the international security community. We welcome growing efforts by governments around the world to address cybersecurity challenges. The recent cyber attacks create an opportunity to improve international cooperation and collaboration on areas of common concern. 

In the United States, we are committed to supporting the most recent White House Cybersecurity Executive Order, which makes critical strides to improve America’s cyber defenses in three key areas: 


Modernization and security innovation 

One of the most promising aspects of the U.S. government’s approach is to set agencies and departments on a path to modernize security practices and strengthen cyber defenses across the federal government. We strongly support modernizing computing systems, making security simple and scalable by default, and adopting best practices like zero trust frameworks. As we saw with SolarWinds and the Microsoft Exchange attacks, proprietary systems and restrictions on interoperability and data portability can amplify a network’s vulnerability, helping attackers scale up their efforts. Being tied to a single legacy system also keeps public sector agencies and businesses from taking advantage of the latest cloud-based security solutions. 

Modern systems create the ability to make frequent security updates and changes safely, a critical part of cyber-defense for both the government and private sector. If we are going to solve big security problems, we need to move beyond security band-aids to eliminating entire classes of vulnerabilities, like the risk of clicking on bad links. 


Secure software development

The U.S. government’s call to action to secure software development practices could bring about the most significant progress on cybersecurity in a decade and will likely have a significant long-term impact on government risk postures. 

At Google, we’ve emphasized securing the software supply chain and we’ve long built technologies and advocated for standards that enhance the integrity and security of software. We continue to work with the U.S. Commerce Department on these issues and support their effort to develop and share best practices. 

Public-private partnerships

In the last few weeks, ransomware attacks have targeted our schools, hospitals, oil pipelines and food supply. Meaningful improvement in cybersecurity will require the public and private sectors to work together in areas like sharing information on cyber threats; developing a comprehensive, defensive security posture to protect against ransomware; and coordinating how they identify and invest in next-generation security tools. 

We are committed to advancing our collective cybersecurity. We have had to block many attacks, including some from nation-states.  Those experiences have given us insights into what works in practice, so our government and private-sector customers don’t have to tackle these issues on their own or depend on the same enterprise technology that created the issues in the first place. Governments need industry-wide support and we are ready and willing to do our part.

We look forward to expanding our work with the United States and other governments, as well as with private sector partners, to develop security technologies and standards that make us all safer. 


Seizing the moment – A framework for American innovation

Decades of government investment in R&D led to scientific breakthroughs that gave us the tools we use every day, and public-private partnerships have sparked innovations from the microchip to the internet. Government R&D investment has led to economic growth, jobs and new startups. As just one example, some of Google’s earliest work was made possible, in part, by the Digital Library Initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation.

But if you fast forward to today, the U.S. government investment in tech has moved to the slow lane. Government-funded research in the U.S. has fallen by 60% as a percentage of GDP — from 1.9% of GDP in 1964 to just 0.7% today. Many countries around the world are investing significantly in research and development. For example, China has said that it will be increasing government R&D funding by 7% annually and recently announced a five-year plan to invest an additional $1.4 trillion in developing next-generation technologies.

As a nation we now have a historic opportunity to put aside partisanship and come together on an issue that will determine our future competitiveness. The United States must seize the moment to cultivate science and technology by setting out a national innovation strategy, and we commit to doing our part.

Senators Schumer and Young have introduced the bipartisan Endless Frontier Act — an important step in putting to work America’s strengths in science and technology to tackle some of the biggest issues of our time, from climate change to global health. Legislative proposals to increase funding for the National Science Foundation will accelerate innovation in the technologies of the future — including quantum computing, AI, biotech and genomics, advanced wireless networks, and robotics — and strengthen the U.S. innovation ecosystem through regional hubs spread throughout the country.

We are also encouraged to see that key components of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan call for increased investment in R&D, including focus on advanced manufacturing, support for underrepresented students in STEM, and collaboration with U.S. universities. We hope Congress can come together in a bipartisan way to support extra investment in research and development.

Beyond direct support for R&D, our national innovation strategy should include support for immigration reform, entrepreneurial start-ups, regulatory clarity, and open data and interoperability.

America’s leadership in science and technology comes in part from our unmatched ability to recruit, train, and retain the world’s best talent. Our doors must be open to the best and the brightest, and we should make it easier for experts in vital technology fields to come to the United States and help grow our innovation economy. In parallel, a renewed focus on STEM education, skills-based training, and school-to-work apprenticeship programs will empower American workers and promote job and wage growth around the country.

America’s innovation framework should work for businesses of all sizes.  At a time when we’re seeing record-setting investment in the promise of new companies, the government can pitch in by expanding access to public resources such as data, software, and computing infrastructure. Streamlined government contracting will also make it easier for startups to bid for large contracts and gain commercial opportunities.

Tech breakthroughs are built on accumulated and shared knowledge — we all stand on the shoulders of others. Data interoperability and open-source software help all of us, including smaller companies and research organizations. The government should promote interoperability, open data, and open-source applications by more actively sharing public data and contributing to open-source platforms.

Clear, balanced and consistent regulations can unlock innovation while protecting consumers and ensuring an equal playing field. Any new generation of technology raises important new questions and requires a balancing of concerns. At the same time, streamlining regulatory burdens can speed great new products to market, helping smaller companies who can struggle to comply with costly or complex rules.

Larger companies like Google and Alphabet have an important role to play in supporting this work, and our public reports show that we’ve invested more than $100 billion in R&D over the last five years. We’ll keep publishing our findings in scientific journals and support public research through public-private partnerships, like our work with NSF on the National AI Research Institute for Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration and our breakthroughs in quantum computing. We also launched Google Career Certificates to help workers develop the skills they need and share in the benefits of growing industries. And because open data and open-source code are essential for innovation, we host a large number ofpublicly available datasets, services, and software accessible to everyone.

We welcome the moves made in recent days and weeks to support America’s innovation leadership.  We’ll continue to look for opportunities to collaborate with government, academic institutions, and others to do our part.

Our ongoing commitment to supporting journalism

Google has always been committed to providing high-quality and relevant information, and to supporting the news publishers who help create it. We are one of the world’s leading financial supporters of journalism. We’ve shared billions of dollars in revenue with news publishers via our ad network, helped news organizations develop new business models and revenue streams, and committed $1 billion over the next three years to license news content through Google News Showcase.  

We welcome the discussion of ways to create a better economic future for quality journalism, especially as the news media business model has been facing increased challenges for many years. But proposals that would disrupt access to the open web (such as requiring payment for just showing links to websites) would hurt consumers, small businesses, and publishers. That’s why we’ve engaged constructively with publishers around the world on better solutions and will continue to do so. 

We also believe that this important debate should be about the substance of the issue, and not derailed by naked corporate opportunism … which brings us to Microsoft’s sudden interest in this discussion. We respect Microsoft’s success and we compete hard with them in cloud computing, search, productivity apps, video conferencing, email and many other areas. Unfortunately, as competition in these areas intensifies, they are reverting to their familiar playbook of attacking rivals and lobbying for regulations that benefit their own interests. They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival. And their claims about our business and how we work with news publishers are just plain wrong.

This latest attack marks a return to Microsoft’s longtime practices. And it’s no coincidence that Microsoft’s newfound interest in attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at a moment when they’ve allowed tens of thousands of their customers — including government agencies in the U.S., NATO allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and, presumably, news organizations — to be actively hacked via major Microsoft vulnerabilities. Microsoft was warned about the vulnerabilities in their system, knew they were being exploited, and are now doing damage control while their customers scramble to pick up the pieces from what has been dubbed the Great Email Robbery. So maybe it’s not surprising to see them dusting off the old diversionary Scroogled playbook.

Microsoft is the second-largest company in the U.S. by market capitalization and the owner of LinkedIn, MSN, Microsoft News and Bing, all of which are places where news is regularly consumed and shared. But their track record is spotty: They have paid out a much smaller amount to the news industry than we have. And given the chance to support or fund their own journalists, Microsoft replaced them with AI bots. 

Microsoft’s attempts at distraction aside, we’ll continue to collaborate with news organizations and policymakers around the world to enable a strong future for journalism. We're doing a lot to support journalism, and will do much more. We look forward to continuing to engage with regulators and news publishers to ensure a thriving and healthy publishing industry.

What people are saying about Australia’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code

Microsoft’s take on Australia’s proposed law is unsurprising — of course they'd be eager to impose an unworkable levy on a rival and increase their market share. 

But in its eagerness, Microsoft makes numerous claims that have been thoroughly and independently debunked. 

We have long been committed to supporting high-quality content on the web. Our issue is absolutely not with paying news organizations — we’ve done this for many years. Today Google News Showcase is paying publishers, and supporting local journalism, in Australia and over a dozen countries. Through these partnerships, we are paying significant amounts to support news organizations large and small — with more to come. 

But we and others have pointed to significant concerns with the proposed Australian law, while proposing reasonable amendments to make it work. The issue isn’t whether companies pay to support quality content; the issue is how. The law would unfairly require unknown payments for simply showing links to news businesses, while giving, to a favored few, special previews of search ranking. Those aren’t workable solutions and would fundamentally change the Internet, hurting the people and businesses who use it. But there are better ways, and we’re committed to making progress.

Don't take our (or Microsoft’s) word for it. Here's what others are saying, from a former Australian Prime Minister, to the Business Council of Australia, to the inventor of the web.

What people are saying about Australia’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code
10:25
Quote from the Business Council of Australia
An image of a quote from the FT editorial board
An image of a quote from Sir Tim Berners Lee

Our continuing support for Dreamers

For generations, talented immigrants have helped America drive technological breakthroughs and scientific advancements that have created millions of new jobs in new industries, enriching our culture and our economy.

That’s why we have long supported the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This was established in 2012 and allows “Dreamers” who came to the United States as children to request deferred action and work authorization for a renewal period of two years. Google proudly employs Dreamers who work to build the products you use every day. And we’ve defended their right to stay in the United States by joining amici briefs in court supporting DACA.

Unfortunately, DACA’s immediate future is uncertain. At the end of 2020, a U.S. District Court indicated that it could soon issue a ruling against DACA and bar new applications and ultimately renewals as well, leaving countless Dreamers in limbo during this uncertain time.

We believe it’s important that Dreamers have a chance to apply for protection under the program so that they can safeguard their status in the United States. But in the middle of a global pandemic that has led to economic hardship, especially for the many immigrants playing essential roles on the front lines, there is concern that many Dreamers cannot afford to pay the application fee

We want to do our part, so Google.org is making a $250,000 grant to United We Dream to cover the DACA application fees of over 500 Dreamers. This grant builds on over $35 million in support that Google.org and Google employees have contributed over the years to support immigrants and refugees worldwide, including more than $1 million from Googlers and Google.org specifically supporting DACA and domestic immigration efforts through employee giving campaigns led by HOLA (Google’s Latino Employee Resource Group).

We know this is only a temporary solution. We need legislation that not only protects Dreamers, but also delivers other much-needed reforms. We will support efforts by the new Congress and incoming Administration to pass comprehensive immigration reform that improves employment-based visa programs that enhance American competitiveness, gives greater assurance to immigrant workers and employers, and promotes better and more humane immigration processing and border security practices.

Dreamers and other talented immigrants enrich our communities, contribute to our economy, and exemplify the innovative spirit of America. We’re proud to support them.

The opportunity for “Digital Sprinters”

People around the world are confronting once-in-a-generation challenges: a global pandemic, an economic downturn of unprecedented proportions, rising demands for equity, and dramatic strains on financial resources. 

The rain from this perfect storm is falling hardest on emerging markets. In many cases, they’re struggling to manage the pandemic with fewer public health resources and also suffer from greater economic vulnerabilities. Yet emerging markets also have some of the most vibrant economies and greatest entrepreneurial energy in the world. With the right policy frameworks, they can become ideal launching pads for future innovation. This challenging moment may be exactly the right time for these economies to pursue ambitious digital transformation, using their immediate recovery efforts to develop sustainable economic gains. 

Nearly a third of U.S. small business owners are using digital tools to save their business during the COVID-19 crisis. In emerging markets too, digital technologies are often providing a lifeline: a plus-size clothes designer in Manaus, Brazil, a musical instruments maker in Istanbul, Turkey and an owner of a guest house in Durban, South Africa have all been able to survive by using digital technologies and online commerce.

Becoming “Digital Sprinters”

We call these emerging economies “Digital Sprinters” because, by becoming more digital, they have the potential to sprint ahead toward economic development. Based on our experiences, we believe governments and the private sector should focus on four key areas, as detailed in a report we're releasing today:

Four key areas to focus on regarding "Digital Sprinters"
  • Physical capital: this is about digital connectivity and infrastructure. It’s not just about investment but also how infrastructure is managed.
  • Human capital: countries need a comprehensive approach to worker training, economic security, entrepreneurship, and combating discrimination.
  • Technology: increasing the use of data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, which empower the growth of next-generation technologies and unlock future growth. This means new opportunities alongside new questions about how best to harness these technologies.
  • Competitiveness:policies that promote competitive and open markets, interoperable regulatory standards, and tax regimes that are predictable and based on international standards.

Our recommendations reflect just one perspective on public policy frameworks for digital transformation. We hope that the report will help advance conversations about digitally-driven growth among governments, civil society, international organizations, academic institutions and entrepreneurs.

Potential economic gains

The economic potential from digital transformation is huge. A new study finds that, by 2030, digital transformation could generate as much $3.4 trillion of economic value in these Digital Sprinter markets. At a country level this translates to 25 percent of GDP in Brazil, 31 percent in Saudi Arabia and 33 percent in Nigeria, to name a few examples.


Emerging markets face a watershed moment today. As COVID-19 is disrupting world order and breaking supply chains, emerging markets have an opportunity to transform and emerge as stronger players. We hope these reports published today can play a part in helping decision-makers take advantage of these opportunities.

A deeply flawed lawsuit that would do nothing to help consumers

Google Search has put the world’s information at the fingertips of over a billion people. Our engineers work to offer the best search engine possible, constantly improving and fine-tuning it. We think that’s why a wide cross-section of Americans value and often love our free products. 

Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives. 

This lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers. To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use.

The Department's dubious complaint

Let's talk specifics. The Department's complaint relies on dubious antitrust arguments to criticize our efforts to make Google Search easily available to people. 

Yes, like countless other businesses, we pay to promote our services, just like a cereal brand might pay a supermarket to stock its products at the end of a row or on a shelf at eye level. For digital services, when you first buy a device, it has a kind of home screen “eye level shelf.” On mobile, that shelf is controlled by Apple, as well as companies like AT&T, Verizon, Samsung and LG. On desktop computers, that shelf space is overwhelmingly controlled by Microsoft. 

So, we negotiate agreements with many of those companies for eye-level shelf space. But let's be clear—our competitors are readily available too, if you want to use them. 

Our agreements with Apple and other device makers and carriers are no different from the agreements that many other companies have traditionally used to distribute software. Other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, compete with us for these agreements. And our agreements have passed repeated antitrust reviews. 

Here's more detail:

Apple devices

Apple features Google Search in its Safari browser because they say Google is “the best.” This arrangement is not exclusive—our competitors Bing and Yahoo! pay to prominently feature, and other rival services also appear.
Bing and Yahoo! pay Apple to be featured in Safari. iPhone 11 and Macbook Pro showing iOS 14 and MacOS Catalina with callouts showing Yahoo!, Bing and Google icons

Changing your search engine in Safari is easy. On desktop, one click and you’re presented with a range of options.

Setting your search engine on Safari desktop. Laptop showing a dropdown menu in browser with options to select Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo

Apple’s iPhone makes it simple to change your settings and use alternative search engines in Safari—and it’s even easier in iOS14 where you can add widgets from different providers or swipe on the home screen to search.

Microsoft

Google doesn't come preloaded on Windows devices. Microsoft preloads its Edge browser on Windows devices, where Bing is the default search engine.

Microsoft Edge is preloaded on Windows devices and Bing is the default search engine. HP 14" laptop with Windows 10 showing Bing preloaded.

Android

On Android devices, we have promotional agreements with carriers and device makers to feature Google services. These agreements enable us to distribute Android for free, so they directly reduce the price that people pay for phones. But even with these agreements, carriers and device makers often preload numerous competing apps and app stores.

Rival apps and app stores are often preloaded onto Android devices. Samsung Galaxy A51 running Android 10 with a callout box showing Samsung Bixby Assistant, Samsung Galaxy Store, Samsung Browser, Facebook, and Microsoft Outlook Email

Look how easy it is to add a different search app or widget on Android.

Downloading a search engine on Android. Samsung Galaxy A51 running Android 10 showing Bing being downloaded
Setting a search widget on Android. Samsung Galaxy A51 running Android 10 showing Bing widget being set up

The bigger point the lawsuit misses 

The bigger point is that people don’t use Google because they have to, they use it because they choose to. This isn’t the dial-up 1990s, when changing services was slow and difficult, and often required you to buy and install software with a CD-ROM. Today, you can easily download your choice of apps or change your default settings in a matter of seconds—faster than you can walk to another aisle in the grocery store. 

This lawsuit claims that Americans aren’t sophisticated enough to do this. But we know that’s not true. And you know it too: people downloaded a record 204 billion apps in 2019. Many of the world's most popular apps aren't preloaded—think of Spotify, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon and Facebook.

The data shows that people choose their preferred service: take Mozilla’s Firefox browser as an example. It’s funded almost entirely by revenue from search promotional agreements.  When Yahoo! paid to be the default search engine in Firefox, most Americans promptly switched their search engine to their first choice—Google. (Mozilla later chose Google to be its default search provider, citing an “effort to provide quality search” and its “focus on user experience.”)

It’s also trivially easy to change your search engine in our browser, Chrome.

Setting your search engine on Chrome mobile. Samsung Galaxy A51 running Android 10 showing someone changing search engine from Google to Bing
Setting your search engine on Chrome desktop. Chrome browser on desktop showing someone changing search engine to Bing


How people access information today

There's another area in which the lawsuit is wrong about how Americans use the Internet. It claims that we compete only with other general search engines. But that’s demonstrably wrong. People find information in lots of ways: They look for news on Twitter, flights on Kayak and Expedia, restaurants on OpenTable, recommendations on Instagram and Pinterest. And when searching to buy something, around 60 percent of Americans start on Amazon. Every day, Americans choose to use all these services and thousands more.

Next steps

We understand that with our success comes scrutiny, but we stand by our position. American antitrust law is designed to promote innovation and help consumers, not tilt the playing field in favor of particular competitors or make it harder for people to get the services they want. We’re confident that a court will conclude that this suit doesn’t square with either the facts or the law. 

In the meantime, we remain absolutely focused on delivering the free services that help Americans every day. Because that’s what matters most.

You can learn more about our approach to competition at g.co/competition.