COMPANY PROFILE

Google

Headquarters: Mountain View, United States · Group: Alphabet · Founded: 1998 · Listed: NASDAQ: GOOGL (Alphabet Inc.)

16 fines or sanctions1 data breach

What it does and how it makes money

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., offers people Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail and other services, and sells advertising and cloud services (Google Cloud) to businesses.

Most of its revenue comes from advertising on Search, YouTube and partner sites; the rest comes from Google Cloud, subscriptions, platforms and devices. ^[1]

What data it collects about you

According to its privacy policy, it collects what you create or provide (account details, emails, photos, documents), information about your apps, browsers and devices, your activity (searches, videos watched, purchases) and your location (GPS, IP address, nearby signals). It uses this, among other things, to personalise content and show personalised ads. ^[2]

How it turns your data into money

Google collects information about your activity in its services, your location, and the apps, browsers and devices you use. It uses this to show you personalised ads based on your interests and activity, and for analytics and measurement. Over two million non-Google websites and apps partner with Google to show ads, and Google lets specific partners collect information from your browser or device. If you search for 'running shoes' and later visit a blog with Google ads, you may see shoe ads there; Google says it does not share personally identifying information with advertisers. ^[3]

Where it is incorporated

Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a holding company incorporated in Delaware (USA) with principal offices at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California, created in the restructuring completed on October 2, 2015. ^[4]

Taxes and low-tax countries

According to filings at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce reported by Reuters, Google moved €19.9 billion in 2017 through a Dutch shell company to a Bermuda affiliate, a structure known as the 'Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich', legal at the time; Ireland planned to phase it out in 2020. Alphabet's annual report states an effective tax rate of 16.4% in 2024 and 16.8% in 2025. ^[5]

Competition and monopoly

In the U.S. Google has lost two Justice Department monopolization cases: in the search case (District of Columbia), on September 2, 2025 the court barred exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Assistant and Gemini and ordered Google to share search-index data with rivals; in the ad-tech case, on April 17, 2025 the Eastern District of Virginia held that Google monopolized open-web advertising markets. In the EU, the Court of Justice upheld in September 2024 the €2.4 billion fine for favouring its own comparison-shopping service, and in September 2025 the Commission announced a further €2.95 billion fine for favouring its AdX exchange (Art. 102 TFEU). ^[6]

Money

Fines and sanctions

In total: 11,020 million EUR + 2,044 million USD + 75 million SEK

• Comisión Europea · European Union · July 23, 2026890 million EUR
  Digital Markets Act (DMA): favouring its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results in Search (460 million) and restricting developers from steering users to offers outside Google Play (430 million). ^[7]
• Comisión Europea · European Union · September 5, 20252,950 million EUR
  Antitrust: abuse of a dominant position in advertising technology by favouring its own AdX ad exchange since at least 2014. ^[8]
• CNIL · France · September 1, 2025325 million EUR
  Showing email-like ads between Gmail messages without prior consent, and invalid consent to advertising cookies when creating a Google account (Google LLC 200 million, Google Ireland 125 million). ^[9]
• Fiscal General de Texas · United States · May 9, 20251,375 million USD
  Settlement with the Texas Attorney General over tracking location, collecting data from incognito searches and capturing biometric data (voiceprints and facial geometry) without consent. ^[10]
• Fiscales generales de 40 estados · United States · November 14, 2022391.5 million USD
  Settlement with 40 states over continuing to collect location data after users believed they had turned off location tracking in their account settings. ^[11]
• Fiscal General de Arizona · United States · October 202285 million USD
  Settlement with Arizona in a lawsuit over its location-tracking practices. ^[11]
• AEPD · Spain · 202210 million EUR
  Transferring data to the Lumen Project without a legal basis and making it hard to exercise the right to erasure. ^[12]
• CNIL · France · December 31, 2021150 million EUR
  Making it harder to refuse cookies than to accept them, including on YouTube (Google LLC 90 million, Google Ireland 60 million). ^[13]
• CNIL · France · December 2020100 million EUR
  Placing advertising cookies without prior consent, without informing users and with a partly defective refusal mechanism. Upheld by the Conseil d'État in January 2022. ^[14]
• IMY (Autoridad sueca de protección de datos) · Sweden · 202075 million SEK
  Failures in applying the right to be forgotten, allowing website owners to republish content delisted from search results. Appealed by Google. ^[12]
• FTC y Fiscal General de Nueva York · United States · September 4, 2019170 million USD
  Settlement: YouTube collected identifiers (cookies) from viewers of child-directed channels without parental consent to serve targeted ads (COPPA). 136 million to the FTC and 34 million to New York. These are the FTC's allegations, resolved by settlement. ^[15]
• Comisión Europea · European Union · March 20, 20191,490 million EUR annulled
  Antitrust: clauses in AdSense for Search contracts that blocked websites from showing rivals' ads. Annulled by the EU General Court in September 2024. ^[16]
• CNIL · France · January 21, 201950 million EUR
  GDPR: lack of transparency and of a valid legal basis for ad personalisation, following complaints by NOYB and La Quadrature du Net. ^[17]
• Comisión Europea · European Union · July 18, 20184,340 million EUR 4,125 million EUR
  Antitrust: illegal restrictions on Android device makers and mobile network operators to cement its dominance in search. Reduced to EUR 4.125 billion by the General Court in 2022; the EU Court of Justice dismissed Google's appeal in 2026. ^[18]
• Comisión Europea · European Union · June 27, 20172,420 million EUR
  Antitrust: favouring its own comparison shopping service (Google Shopping) in search results. Upheld on final appeal by the EU Court of Justice in September 2024. ^[16]
• FTC · United States · August 9, 201222.5 million USD
  Civil penalty agreed with the FTC for circumventing Safari's cookie blocking to track users it had told were protected. These are the FTC's allegations, resolved by settlement. ^[19]

Data breaches and hacks

• December 10, 201852,500,000 people affected
  A bug in a Google+ API let apps see profile data users had not made public, such as name, email address, occupation and age. ^[20]

Ask it to delete your data

This is the page the company itself gives to ask it to delete your data or stop selling it: Open its page ^[21]

With GUARDIANA or GUARDIANA ZERO, you download from this same profile the letter asking it to delete your data, under your country’s law, ready to attach to an email.

Its website

https://about.google/

Sources

1. https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2025/q4/2025q4-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf
2. https://policies.google.com/privacy
3. https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
4. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000018/goog-20251231.htm
5. https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/01/google-moved-nearly-e20bn-through-dutch-shell-firm-reuters
6. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google
7. https://europa.eu/newsroom/ecpc-failover/pdf/ip-26-1670_en.pdf
8. https://www.belganewsagency.eu/commission-fines-google-295bn-euros-for-abusive-practices-in-advertising-tech
9. https://cnil.fr/fr/publicites-inserees-entre-les-courriels-et-cookies-la-cnil-sanctionne-google-dune-amende-de-325
10. https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-historic-1375-billion-settlement-google-related-texans-data
11. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/google-settles-with-40-states-over-location-tracking-practices.html
12. https://termly.io/resources/articles/google-gdpr-fine
13. https://next.ink/brief-article/214-millions-deuros-damendes-cnil-en-2021/
14. https://siecledigital.fr/2022/01/31/le-conseil-detat-confirme-lamende-de-la-cnil-prononcee-en-2020-envers-google/
15. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law
16. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-google-setback-appeal-eu-fine/
17. https://paperjam.lu/article/news-google-condamne-a-50-millions-deuros-par-la-cnil
18. https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/comp/items/631884
19. https://guptadeepak.com/tech-fines/violation/google-us-safari-2012/
20. https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/expediting-changes-google-plus/
21. https://myaccount.google.com/delete-services-or-account

What this profile does NOT say

• It does not say this company does anything illegal. The only thing it states about anyone’s legality is what a regulator or a court has already decided, with the date and the link to the source.
• It does not say what data of yours it holds: only the company knows, which is why you have the right to ask it.
• If you are this company and a fact is wrong, write to hola@guardianagroup.com and it will be corrected, with its date.

Public facts with their sources, checked on October 12, 2026. All profiles →