Welcome to Alphabet's 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Today's remarks, presentations, and answers to questions may contain forward-looking statements about our business outlook and other matters. Actual results or outcomes may differ from these forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties, which are discussed today or detailed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Forms 10-K and 10-Q. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements.
Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is...
What does this remind you of?
Schrödinger's cat .
Wow.
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When all of these tools come together, it's a powerful combination.
It's amazing.
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It's an entire suite of different kinds of possibilities.
Hi, I'm Gemini.
What neighborhood do you think I'm in?
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Together, we're creating a new era.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Alphabet's 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I'm John Hennessy, and I have the privilege of serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of Alphabet, and I'll be presiding over today's meeting. Joining us today are members of Alphabet's Board of Directors. We also have members of the management team participating. I'll open with a few words, and then I'll turn it over to Sundar, who will talk about how we are positioned for the next wave of AI innovation and opportunity ahead. We'll then hear from Kathryn Hall, our Vice President of Corporate Legal and Assistant Corporate Secretary, who will go through the formal business of the meeting. Finally, we have set aside time to answer a number of stockholder questions that have been submitted online. We will focus on addressing the topics of most interest to stockholders.
You can see all the rules and procedures for this meeting posted on the virtual annual meeting platform. Looking back over the last 25 years, our board is proud of the contributions Alphabet has made to many of the foundational technologies of our time. From offering better ways to search the web, send emails, and navigate the world, Alphabet's commitment to research and innovation has turned technology into accessible and useful tools now used by billions of people. Alphabet has continued to innovate this year, particularly in AI. Since last year, we've been testing generative AI and search, and recently brought AI Overviews to everyone in the U.S. We expect to bring this technology to over a billion people by the end of the year. In December, Google launched Gemini, our most capable and general AI model to date.
These capabilities were on display at the annual developer event, Google I/O, where the company showcased how Google is bringing Gemini's breakthrough capabilities to many products, including search, photos, Workspace, Android, and more. Sundar will talk more about this shortly. As a member of the board for the last 20 years and as someone who has worked in the field of computer science for 50 years, I continue to be impressed by Alphabet's incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. Looking ahead, the board is committed to a disciplined and responsible approach in its oversight of Alphabet's long-term investments, particularly in AI. Developers are using Google's models and infrastructure to build new generative AI applications. Enterprises and startups around the world are growing with our AI tools using Google Cloud.
AI has been fundamental to many of the advertising tools developed over the past decade, and businesses of all sizes are using Google's advertising products to drive growth. Our board works closely with Sundar and the management team to oversee the company's AI development, guided by the AI Principles, which the company first published in 2018. During this transformational time in computing, the collective experience of our directors across science, academia, technology, and business is invaluable as we help guide Alphabet. Together, this exemplary group of technologists, leaders, and computer scientists, including Google's founders, bring their deep experience, knowledge, and expertise to the board. Our board and committee meetings, which include in-depth reports and updates from senior management, have ensured that the board is focused on the oversight of the company's AI strategy.
Our discussions have included many emerging issues at the cutting edge of AI development, from protecting the safety and privacy of users to our long-standing commitment to human rights to developing ways to accelerate climate action. Across all matters related to the company, the board works closely with our investor relations and legal teams to understand the perspectives of our investors. We value the input and support of all of Alphabet's stakeholders, from our employees and users to our partners and stockholders. Together, they have fueled the company's immense contributions to making technology and information more accessible for all. Our board deeply values all of these perspectives, which are critical to a strong future for Alphabet.
On behalf of my fellow directors, as we move through this inflection point powered by AI breakthroughs, we could not be more grateful for your trust in us to oversee Alphabet's work and its important mission. With that, I'll turn it over to Sundar.
Thanks, John, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. It's been an exciting year with momentum across so many areas of our business. That includes important progress to diversify through key long-term bets, including Google Cloud and YouTube, as well as continued growth in search. We also celebrated our 25th birthday last September. It's a huge privilege to reach this milestone, and it's made possible by the people who use our products, employees past and present, and shareholders who believe in our mission as much as we do.
On behalf of everyone at Google, thank you for the support and the opportunity to build products for the world. As we look forward, I see six underlying strengths we have as a company that set us up well for the AI transition ahead. First, our foundation of research leadership. Over the years, we have pioneered many of the modern AI breakthroughs. We have continued to build on that momentum at a relentless pace. As John mentioned, in December, we launched Gemini, our most capable model yet. We built it to be multimodal from the ground up, so it can reason across text, images, video, code, and more. Since then, we have unveiled Gemini Advanced, offering access to our most capable models to collaborate and get things done.
We have already been rolling out Gemini 1.5 Pro, which delivered a big breakthrough and the longest context window of any foundation model yet. At I/O, we also shared Project Astra, Google DeepMind's early prototype that brings together advances in spatial understanding, video processing, and memory. It shows our progress towards building a future AI assistant that can be truly helpful in daily life. These technical advances are possible because of our second underlying strength: world-leading infrastructure built for the AI era. One example is TPUs, which we have pioneered for more than a decade. Our sixth-generation Trillium is our most performant and energy-efficient TPU to date. This will be available to cloud customers in late 2024, and in early 2025, we'll offer NVIDIA's cutting-edge Blackwell GPUs. Alongside this infrastructure leadership, we have continued to innovate in search.
Each technological shift from the web to mobile and even to voice has expanded what's possible with search. Search in the Gemini era is no different. We have unveiled new innovations like Circle to Search, which lets you search your Android screen. Thanks to advancements in video understanding, we can take visual search to a whole new level with the ability to ask questions with video. Gemini's multi-step reasoning capabilities can answer increasingly complex questions or give a quick AI overview of a topic and provide links to go deeper. A third strength is our global product footprint. We have 15 products that serve over 500 million people globally, six products and more than 2 billion monthly users, and we operate across 100 countries.
This gives us a lot of opportunities to bring helpful generative AI features to people everywhere, be it to search and summarize emails in Gmail, unlock new experiences on Android and Pixel, create on YouTube with AI-powered tools, and much more. To do this well, we have focused on improving our velocity and execution, simplifying our structures to help us move faster. We continue to allocate resources towards our highest priorities, and we remain focused on the ongoing efforts to slow the pace of expense growth. Finally, I would highlight our monetization paths through ads and cloud, as well as subscriptions. At Google Marketing Live in May, we announced 30-plus new products and features, including new types of immersive generative AI-driven shopping and ads features. I mentioned our cloud business, which continues to grow as we bring the best of Google AI to enterprise customers around the world.
Today, more than 60% of funded generative AI startups and nearly 90% of Gen AI unicorns are Google Cloud customers. Subscriptions also continue to grow strongly. Google One has crossed 100 million subscribers, and over 1 million people signed up to try our AI Premium service in the first three months, and YouTube TV now has more than 8 million paid subscribers, and YouTube Music and Premium surpassed 100 million subscribers, including trialers. Alongside this growth, we continue to approach the AI opportunity boldly with a sense of excitement. We're also making sure we do it responsibly. Recent innovation includes new cutting-edge red teaming techniques and expanding SynthID to identify video and text that's AI-generated in addition to images. This bold and responsible approach is fundamental to delivering on our mission and making AI more helpful for everyone.
Finally, in other bets, ridership for Waymo's fully autonomous service continues to grow in San Francisco and Phoenix with high customer satisfaction. We also started offering paid rides in Los Angeles and testing rider-only trips in Austin. Looking ahead, we are excited to lead a new wave of AI progress. Thank you again to the employees and shareholders around the world who make it possible. Before I close, I want to give a special welcome to Anat Ashkenazi, who's joining us July 31st as our new CFO. We'll have a chance to hear plenty from her once she joins. She comes from Eli Lilly and has always had a long-term focus towards investing responsibly for growth, which was important for us in hiring a CFO. I also want to give a special thanks to Ruth Porat, who has steered us so capably as CFO for the past nine years.
She'll remain as CFO until Anat starts, including our Q2 earnings next month. Ruth will then be fully focused on her new role as President and Chief Investment Officer, and I'm looking forward to her continued impact. And with that, I'll turn it back to Kathryn.
Hello, everyone. I'm Kathryn Hall, Alphabet's Assistant Secretary, and I'll be conducting the formal business of the meeting. At this time, I call the meeting to order. Joining us today are Leah Grant, a representative of Broadridge Financial Services, who will act as our inspector of election, and Matthew Sapp and Priya Chandi, representatives of Ernst & Young LLP, our independent accountants. The polls are open and will close after the presentation of our formal business matters. As John noted earlier, we've set aside time to respond to questions after we have finished the formal business of the meeting. To ask a question during the meeting, please enter your question in the Ask a Question box on the virtual meeting website. Stockholder questions or remarks must be relevant to the meeting. Thanks in advance for your cooperation with all of the rules of procedure posted on the virtual meeting website.
I've received an affidavit of mailing from Broadridge that states that the notice of this meeting was duly given. All stockholders of Class A and/or Class B Common Stock as of the close of business on April 9, 2024, are entitled to vote at this meeting. In addition, I've been advised by the inspector of election that holders of our outstanding Class A and Class B Common Stock, representing at least a majority of the voting power of our outstanding Class A and Class B Common Stock entitled to vote, are represented at today's meeting. Therefore, a quorum is present, the meeting is duly constituted, and the business of the meeting may proceed. The first item of business is the election of directors. 10 directors will be elected at today's meeting. The directors elected today will hold office until the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders.
The board of directors has nominated the following individuals: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, John L. Hennessy, Frances H. Arnold, R. Martin 'Marty' Chavez , L. John Doerr, Roger W. Ferguson Jr., K. Ram Shriram, and Robin L. Washington. Our bylaws require that stockholders provide advance notice of their intent to nominate persons as directors. No such notice was received. Accordingly, I declare the nominations for directors closed. The next matter being submitted to our stockholders is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2024 fiscal year. Our board of directors has recommended that our stockholders ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as Alphabet's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2024 fiscal year. The next 12 items being submitted are stockholder proposals that were included in our proxy statement.
Our proxy statement also contains Alphabet's response to each of these stockholder proposals, explaining why our board of directors recommends that our stockholders vote against each of the following proposals. The first stockholder proposal is being brought by John Chevedden. I recognize Michael Levin for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Mr. Levin, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Mr. Levin's line.
Mr. Levin, your line is now open.
Thank you very much. This is Mike Levin, working with John Chevedden on this proposal. I'm pleased to make a brief statement here in support of it. This proposal responds to perhaps no greater problem and conflict that exists in corporations today related to conflict of interest of directors, particularly in how directors compensate themselves. At all U.S. companies, including Google, directors design and grant compensation without any oversight or input from shareholders. It represents, as I said, a significant conflict of interest, and this proposal is designed to address that and respond to that. It provides shareholders with a vote over director compensation. It allows directors to design and recommend whatever compensation and whatever amount and structure they deem appropriate, and then gives shareholders the right to approve that compensation. The structure of the proposal is as a bylaw amendment.
So if shareholders today approve this proposal, they will then have the right and opportunity to vote on director compensation at the next shareholder meeting in 2025. So it, again, responds to this significant conflict that pervades companies in the U.S., and we would advise shareholders to approve it to address this in an appropriate way. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Levin. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Stefan Padfield for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
My name is Stefan Padfield, and I am the Deputy Director of the Free Enterprise Project, which is part of the National Center for Public Policy Research. The National Center is a shareholder of Alphabet and the proponent of proposal four, which asks for a report detailing the potential risks associated with omitting viewpoint and ideology from Alphabet's written equal employment opportunity policy. Alphabet's EEO policy identifies 14 discrete protected categories but does not explicitly prohibit discrimination based on viewpoint or ideology. This glaring omission sends a negative signal to current and prospective employees. While a 15th catch-all category includes any other basis protected by law, approximately half of Americans live and work in a jurisdiction with no legal protections if their employer takes action against them for their political activities. And there is certainly reason to be concerned that employees may face discrimination at Alphabet, particularly conservative employees.
For starters, according to the 1792 Exchange, Alphabet's leadership is responsible for over $6 million flowing to Democrats, while less than $75,000 went to Republicans. Most tellingly, a leaked video following the 2016 presidential election shows Google's co-founders, alongside several executives, including the CEO, lamenting the Democrats' loss and insulting and demeaning voters who did not support Clinton. Can you say echo chamber? But this is not the only reason that the 1792 Exchange rates Alphabet a high risk on its corporate bias ratings. Distilling the report, Alphabet has demonstrated a willingness to censor conservatives and Christians on its platforms and to police protected speech in discriminatory ways, discriminates against conservatives and religious nonprofits in its charitable giving, and regularly uses its corporate reputation and funds to advance ideological causes.
For example, the company opposed state and local legislation intended to protect parental rights and girls' sports, as well as girls' bathrooms and locker rooms from men who identify as women. In addition, there is evidence of Alphabet recruiting, retaining, and promoting employees based on race. In opposing our proposal, Alphabet claims that our commitment to a respectful, safe, inclusive workplace, including a wide range of viewpoints, is already embedded across our policies, practices, and trainings. But if it is sufficient to be embedded but not expressly listed, then why explicitly list 14 other discrete protected categories in the EEO policy at all? Given all we've noted, the policy's silence on viewpoint and ideology is deafening. For all these reasons, we ask you to vote for proposal four.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Lendri Purcell . The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Robert Berg for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
My name is Robert Berg, attorney for Alphabet shareholder Lendri Purcell. Ms. Purcell submits shareholder proposal number five for a vote. This shareholder proposal requests Alphabet to issue an annual report on the health effects and financial risks associated with wireless technologies and electromagnetic radiation and compare the safety of Alphabet's wireless products with those of its competitors. Alphabet is a major seller of its own wireless devices, including smartphones, home devices, and wearables, and many of the services and applications Alphabet sells are utilized by customers on wireless devices. All wireless devices transmit wireless radiation when they are operating. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has established guidelines for allowable levels of human exposure to wireless radiation. However, the FCC guidelines were adopted in 1996.
The FCC has not updated these exposure guidelines over the intervening 28 years, despite vast changes in wireless technology, new scientific findings, and the now ubiquitous use of wireless devices. Hundreds of independent peer-reviewed scientific studies have been published linking low-level wireless radiation exposure to serious negative health impacts in humans and animals. In these studies, low-level wireless radiation exposure is linked with increased risk of cancer, memory damage, problems in brain development, the endocrine system, thyroid function, and the reproductive system, along with epigenetic alterations and DNA and genetic damage. Children are uniquely sensitive to wireless radiation exposure and absorb such radiation more deeply into their brains. The health risks posed by wireless radiation exposure from wireless devices, cell towers, and wireless antennas are so substantial that commercial liability insurance indemnifying against these risks is unavailable.
Current user documentation for Alphabet's wireless devices provides only limited information about the risks of wireless radiation exposure. However, many consumers are likely unaware of the existence of these limited warnings because they are buried in dense regulatory language and hidden within layers of internet-based consumer information files. Alphabet's financial disclosures do not specifically address the risks of wireless radiation exposure to the company's financial health. Alphabet needs to improve upon its disclosures about the risks of wireless radiation exposure, including providing instruction about the safest ways to use its wireless devices. Moreover, Alphabet should disclose whether it maintains insurance to cover personal injury risks from such wireless radiation exposure. The company should engage in efforts to modify its wireless devices to minimize the wireless radiation they transmit and should report on its efforts to do so.
The annual report called for on proposal number five would encourage Alphabet management to disclose and minimize the risks. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by As You Sow on behalf of the As You Sow Foundation Fund. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. Oops, I'm sorry. I think I read the wrong proposal. Sorry. Going back, proposal number six. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the National Legal and Policy Center. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Luke Perlot for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning. It is the duty of Alphabet's board of directors to represent the interests of Alphabet shareholders and ensure that the company is managed not only for today's success but for sustainable growth and long-term value. However, recent trends indicate a troubling diversion from Alphabet's core mission towards highly partisan and controversial social activism. This misalignment with the company's core objective is not just a philosophical issue. It directly impacts Alphabet's reputation, operational focus, and ultimately, its long-term financial performance. NLPC's proposal seeks to remedy this issue by asking members of the board of directors to disclose their political and charitable contributions, which will give shareholders greater insight into any personal biases that drive decisions that appear publicly to be politically motivated. Alphabet is known to have a strong left-wing culture, exemplified most by the negative reaction among its senior leaders to the election of President Trump in 2016.
It appears that the company's liberal biases leaked into other areas of the firm's operations and public relations. For example, Alphabet has made significant financial contributions to organizations that support lenient criminal justice policies and encourage the vilification of law enforcement, which have contributed to the deterioration of safety in inner cities. Moreover, the company's history of election interference has raised questions about impartiality and fairness. There is a growing concern that platforms under Alphabet, such as Google, display bias, filtering information through the ideological leanings of its employees. A report published by the Media Research Center found that Google has boosted Democrat or stifled Republican engagement 41 times since 2008. Further, Dr. Robert Epstein found that, if used to its full capacity, Google has the potential to shift as much as 20% of undecided voters. That is an incredible level of power over the nation's electoral system.
Alphabet's internal culture has often been described as woke, which may alienate substantial segments of the company's workforce and customer base. As demonstrated by other corporations like Anheuser-Busch InBev and Target, ideological positions can lead to significant losses. Alphabet recently found itself in hot water after its Gemini image creator produced factually inaccurate depictions of historical figures as people of color. It is crucial to highlight that Alphabet's core business must be technology and innovation, not social engineering. Members of Alphabet's board of directors should disclose their political and charitable contributions to provide greater transparency into these puzzling decisions. For these reasons, we encourage shareholders to vote for proposal number six.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by As You Sow on behalf of the As You Sow Foundation Fund. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Sam Gooch for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present this proposal. I'm Sam Gooch, an Alphabet employee and a technical program manager at Waymo. This shareholder resolution is of the utmost importance as it asks the critical question: how will Alphabet protect its employees' life savings from the economic consequences of climate change? Climate change poses material risk to retirement plan beneficiaries. A recent report found that Google employees could have made over $1 billion more in returns had Google moved to decarbonize its retirement plan 10 years ago. Almost two-thirds of Google's retirement plan assets are invested in the company's Vanguard default target date option, which is heavily exposed to high carbon and deforestation-intensive industries. These investments contribute to climate change, create systemic portfolio risk, and are poor long-term investments, particularly for younger beneficiaries whose retirement benefits are more likely to be harmed due to climate-related financial losses.
Over 1,000 of my fellow Alphabet employees have signed a petition asking Alphabet's 401(k) team to demand that Vanguard offer us better climate-safe investment options that reduce exposure to these climate-related financial risks. Alphabet knows we must address climate risk head-on. It's why employees are proud of our company's climate goals, including a goal to become carbon negative by 2030. Yet how will we meet these goals if Alphabet is at the same time directing nearly $2 billion of our employee 401(k) savings into fossil fuels and burning down the Amazon? These investments undermine the company's climate goals, expose employee savings to financial risk, harm the company's reputation on climate, and could expose the company to litigation risk as it occurred recently.
Just as Alphabet has taken operational climate action, shareholders and employees like me ask that Alphabet now begin to address its target date funds and the billions of dollars our employee retirement funds invest in fossil fuels. This will not only protect our company from the economic impacts of climate change but also protect our employees' life savings. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by United Church Funds as lead filer and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, U.S. Province, as co-filer. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Matthew Ilian for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning, board members and fellow shareholders. My name is Matthew Ilian, and I serve at United Church Funds. In the last two years, this proposal on lobbying transparency received significant support from shareholders. Last year's support totaled 18% under current rules or nearly 50% if all shares had equal voting power. Lobbying transparency is an issue that many investors are deeply concerned about. Alphabet has a mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. But if Alphabet is unwilling to share information, no Google search will ever find it. As I stated last year, Alphabet appears to misunderstand the focus of the shareholder resolution. The company's opposition statement suggests that Alphabet's lobbying transparency efforts are recognized as, and I quote, "best in class." As evidence, the proxy references the CPA- Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability.
We must be clear that the CPA-Zicklin Index is focused on influencing federal and state elections. While we can all congratulate Alphabet for providing industry-leading transparency in these election payments, the same cannot be said of Alphabet's lobbying payments to organizations that seek to influence state and federal legislation. When it comes to lobbying transparency, Alphabet is not a leader but rather a laggard. Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, PayPal, Comcast, and AT&T all publish lobbying payments with specificity or within payment bands. Alphabet does neither. Investors want a clear picture of how companies, their lobbyists, and trade associations are seeking to influence government policy. We urge your support for proposal number eight. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the North Star Asset Management Inc Funded Pension P lan. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Stephen McMurtry for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
My name is Stephen McMurtry, a shareholder, senior software engineer, and member of the Alphabet Workers Union presenting on behalf of North Star Asset Management located in Boston. I am presenting resolution number nine, a request that Alphabet's board initiate and adopt a recapitalization plan for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share. For over a decade, North Star has been presenting at this shareholder meeting to talk about equal shareholder voting. Every year, the vast majority of shareholders support their request. Alphabet's voting structure heavily favors insiders given that Class B shares are granted 10 times the voting rights of Class A shares, and Class C shareholders have zero votes per share. As a result, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin currently control over 51% of our company's total voting power while owning less than 12% of the stock.
They will continue to retain voting control and thus control over decision-making even though they have stepped down from leading the company. The current voting structure also fails to include the oversight of employees who, like me, are partly compensated in the form of Class C no vote shares. Before 2014, employees received voting shares, but this changed after a 2012 proposal where Class A shareholders voted overwhelmingly against the proposal to create Class C shares. Despite Class A shareholders' 85.3% vote against the proposal, it passed with founder support. This clearly illustrates the issues with dual class capital structures, ironically through the creation of a new capital structure. The company's compensation philosophy states that, quote, "Googlers should share the success of the company," end quote. But without voting rights, employees cannot extend oversight and are subject to repeated layoffs and other interferences.
In 2023, Google had its largest layoff ever, cutting 12,000 employees or 6% of its workforce. This year, layoffs have continued across various divisions despite the CEO receiving 2023 compensation of $235,105,454. Shareholders want to have a say in the important matters of the companies in which they invest and work. Yet at Alphabet, shareholders, including employees, do not have equal voting ability to weigh in on significant matters of corporate policy. This voting structure constitutes a considerable risk to governance and shareholder value when there is lack of oversight. Thus, shareholders, North Star urges you to vote for proxy item number nine, a recapitalization plan for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the Educational Foundation of America as lead filer and Planned Parenthood Federation of America on behalf of Aegis Trust as co-filer. I recognize Laura Nixon for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Ms. Nixon, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Ms. Nixon's line.
Ms. Nixon, your line is now open.
Good morning. On behalf of the Educational Foundation of America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, I am pleased to present this proposal. Google Search is the leading source of information on abortion. Americans make about 102 million searches related to abortion each year. Unfortunately, it is also the leading source of misinformation as well. Google is generating millions of dollars from ads placed by facilities known as Crisis Pregnancy Centers or CPCs. These outfits present themselves as providers of legitimate reproductive health care but withhold or lie about the availability of abortion care. They are not medical practices. They do not charge for their services, lack regulatory oversight, and are not covered by federal laws protecting sensitive health data. There are thousands of them in the U.S., especially in the South and Midwest.
CPCs use intentionally misleading language in online ads facilitated by Google that appear when people search for information related to abortion access. A study conducted by watchdog organizations has found that CPCs' Google ads had reached potentially hundreds of thousands of users. Another study demonstrated that when an account identifying as a woman in Phoenix searched for information on how to get an abortion, more than half the search ads served by Google came from the CPCs. This has been a problem year after year for Google and with year after year promises that the company has fixed the problem. Clearly, more needs to be done. The prevalence of misleading information poses significant risk to users and the integrity of the company's products and services. This shareholder proposal is particularly crucial as Google confronts its biggest competition yet in the search engine landscape with the ascent of generative AI.
Google's standing as the top player in search engines largely hinges upon its reputation for accuracy. We believe the requested report will help ensure that Alphabet does more to monitor reproductive health content so that the company mitigates its exposure to serious risks stemming from misinformation, which erodes shareholder value by diminishing Alphabet's reputation, consumer loyalty, brand goodwill, and values. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Nixon. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Trillium Asset Management as lead filer and the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore and the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica as co-filers along with a number of other co-filers. I recognize Jonas Kron for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Mr. Kron, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Mr. Kron's line.
Mr. Kron, your line is now open.
Good morning. My name is Jonas Kron, and I'm pleased to present and hereby move item 11, Trillium Asset Management's shareholder proposal calling on Alphabet's board to amend the charter of the Audit and Compliance Committee to include artificial intelligence activities alongside its existing coverage of data privacy and human rights. In 2018, Alphabet launched its AI principles, a set of guidelines designed to ensure that its AI development is socially beneficial, avoids unfair bias, prioritizes safety, upholds privacy, and maintains high standards of scientific excellence. As AI continues to advance at an exponential rate, it is crucial that we, as Alphabet shareholders, recognize the potential risks and downsides that AI poses to the company, society, and the U.S. economy.
The development of AI without proper oversight and governance could lead to countless problems that directly hurt working Americans, our national security, our principles of equity and equality, and many other areas. Not only should Alphabet's AI advances not be made at the expense of society and users, there is evidence that moving too fast is leading to growing challenges for Alphabet. As more than one respected commentator has pointed out, the trajectory of bad outcomes from AI releases seems to be getting progressively worse and worse, from Bard to Gemini to AI Overview. This undermines trust and raises reputational risks. As our CEO put it in February addressing problematic responses from the Gemini AI engine, the responses were, quote, "completely unacceptable," and we got it wrong. I would also note that the public conversation has begun to include the prospect that Section 230 protections may no longer be available.
Trillium believes that it is therefore our responsibility as shareholders to take reasonable steps to promote good governance for AI. Good governance can set the stage for and be a necessary component of Alphabet proceeding responsibly. Unfortunately, we believe that Alphabet's current board's governance structure is missing an important element: an express and clear responsibility for overseeing Alphabet's AI principles. Microsoft, a key, if not the key, competitor in the AI space, has already taken proactive measures by explicitly including, quote, "responsible artificial intelligence oversight" into its board committee charter structure. This is an important step that can provide a clear foundation for board action and accountability. Microsoft sets a clear precedent for tech companies embracing good AI governance at the board committee level, and we believe that other companies should implement this leading practice. Thank you very much for your time and your support for item 11.
Thank you, Mr. Kron. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Arjuna Capital on behalf of Stephen Schewel as lead filer along with a number of other co-filers. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Natasha Lamb for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning. My name is Natasha Lamb, managing partner of Arjuna Capital, and I move proposal 12 along with co-filers Open MIC and Ekō asking Alphabet to evaluate the risks posed by misinformation and disinformation generated and disseminated through artificial intelligence and to report on plans to mitigate these risks. For years, we've seen the significant proliferation of mis- and disinformation through social media platforms and how the abuse of these platforms has the power to destabilize our public institutions by fostering election disputes, COVID conspiracies, and more. But now the stakes are higher. Mis- and disinformation are becoming more believable and easier to produce with generative AI. We've already seen extreme abuse of generative AI, from deep fakes of political candidates spewing hate speech to a deep fake of a Pentagon explosion that sent our stock market plummeting.
Unfortunately, it could get worse without the proper guardrails in place. For example, what happens this year, a major election year, if races around the world are manipulated by bad actors generating mis- and disinformation through Alphabet's AI products and spewing it across platforms like YouTube? The consequences could be devastating. Generative AI is a game changer. There's no question. But the rush to market has led Alphabet to overlook many of the risks. When Alphabet released its generative AI-powered Bard last spring, numerous experts and investors expressed concern. They urged Alphabet to pause and consider all the risks associated with this new technology so that the company could establish risk mitigation practices. Yet our company raced forward with Bard without the appropriate guardrails in place, and unfortunately, shareholders felt the consequences.
The stock dropped 11% after Bard's launch, which many Google employees themselves called rushed, botched, and premature, given Bard was prone to producing erroneous information, and again in February, the stock lost $96 billion in market value after Gemini's release when it generated historically inaccurate images, including Black Nazis. As long-term shareholders, we want Alphabet to succeed over the long run, which means our company must do what it can today to mitigate the generative AI risks of tomorrow. Not only the risk to society, but to the company itself. Regulatory risk, legal risk, reputational risk, these are only a few, and while Alphabet touts its current reporting, we've only seen principles and platitudes. The company has not outlined concrete actions nor provided the accountability mechanism that investors seek. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the Shareholder Association for Research and Education on behalf of the United Church of Canada Pension Plan and a number of other co-filers. I recognize Serena Chan for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Ms. Chan, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Ms. Chan's line.
Ms. Chan, your line is now open.
Good morning, shareholders. My name is Serena Chan, the Shareholder Advocacy Officer at the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, also known as SHARE. I'm here today representing the United Church of Canada Pension Plan, which filed proposal 13. The proposal asks Alphabet to publish an independent third-party human rights impact assessment examining the actual and potential human rights impacts of Google's artificial intelligence-driven targeted advertising policies and practices. Since 2021, SHARE has been engaging with Alphabet on AI-driven targeted advertising and the risks that such technology may pose to the company and its shareholders. In 2022, we filed a similar proposal at Alphabet, which received support from over 47% of independent shareholders. Despite this, we are concerned to see that there has not been any visible indication from the company to implement the requested assessment. Advertising is the backbone of Alphabet's revenue.
In 2023, Alphabet's ad businesses, including Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Google Network, reached more than $237 billion in revenue, which accounts for more than 75% of Alphabet's revenue. Although targeted advertising plays a significant role in Google's business model, research has shown that such technologies can negatively impact human rights, including violating privacy and freedom of expression and perpetuating systemic discrimination and inequality. In our view, Alphabet does not demonstrate a robust and transparent due diligence system to identify, address, and prevent the adverse human rights impacts stemming from its AI-driven targeted advertising technology. Alphabet's failure to safeguard human rights may expose shareholders to regulatory, legal, and reputational risk. As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve globally, failure to comply with relevant regulation may lead to significant risk to the company. Alphabet has also been subject to legal issues over its data collection practices and policies.
Highlight controversies and criticisms over adverse human rights impacts stemming from Alphabet's practices may impact the company's reputation, which may pose risk to the company and, by extension, its shareholders. Notably, Alphabet has a public commitment endorsing the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights , also known as the UNGPs. The UNGPs state that companies must conduct human rights due diligence on their products and services, particularly if the scale and the scope of impacts are likely to be important. As Alphabet's targeted advertising practices have global ramifications and impacts, the requested assessment is the first step in this process. Fellow shareholders, I move the proposal and ask for your support. I look forward to a more constructive engagement with the company so that Alphabet can effectively manage the risks associated with its targeted advertising technology, which is essential to the success of its business. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Chan. The next stockholder proposal is our final item of business, which is being brought by Boston Common Asset Management. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Amy Orr for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Hello. My name is Amy Orr, and I'm the Director of Shareholder Engagement at Boston Common Asset Management. Today, we seek your support for proposal 14 on Alphabet's 2024 proxy statement, which asks Alphabet to issue a report including a quantitative assessment of how Alphabet will assess child safety risks of its media platforms and further issue a children's rights impact assessment. There is widespread concern that Alphabet's media platforms, specifically YouTube, continue to be used in ways that are harmful to children, including online sexual abuse and exploitation, human trafficking, the impact of social media on children's mental health, and the role that generative AI may play in potentially exacerbating these risks. While the societal risks seem clear, the risks to investors are also profound. Alphabet has been subject to heightened regulatory and litigation risk in recent years.
To name a few examples, in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Alphabet a record fine of $170 million for the illegal collection of children's data. This highlighted insufficient controls and oversight at Alphabet. In 2023, U.K. information regulators began exploring additional complaints, accusing YouTube once again of illegal collection of children's data. In 2024, earlier this year, New York City sued Alphabet, accusing its platforms of exacerbating the youth mental health crisis. Now, this issue is not new. We have held dialogue with Alphabet on topics such as content moderation and children's online safety for years. While the company has made some improvements, it has not fully satisfied our request. We believe that leaving the burden to parental controls and oversight is not a sufficient solution to counterbalance these emerging and severe risks to children.
We understand that Alphabet is planning to comply with enhanced reporting requirements of emerging regulations such as the Digital Services Act and the U.K. Online Safety Act, among others. However, we disagree with Alphabet's assertion that its current reporting sufficiently addresses investors' concerns about the emerging risks of children's online safety. So, in conclusion, we believe that investors would benefit from the publication of a report outlining clear targets, quantitative metrics, assessing whether YouTube has improved its performance on child safety impacts globally. We further argue that a children's rights impact assessment would help investors understand the emerging risks that new technologies such as generative AI present to children's mental health and online safety. We therefore urge you to vote for proposal 14, the proposal requesting a report addressing the risks that Alphabet's platforms have on children's rights and child safety. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, the polls are currently open and will close shortly. If you have already voted, there is nothing else you need to do unless you would like to change your vote while the polls are open. We appreciate the issues raised in the various stockholder proposals today. In many cases, we believe that we have already addressed them. Many proposals call for the preparation of additional reports. We have a long track record of transparency, and we are proud of the leadership role our company has played in advancing disclosures on numerous critical matters. This year, we added a new transparency and oversight highlight section to our proxy statement, starting on page 10 of the proxy statement, to underscore this. I'll now provide a bit more color on the areas of AI, the safety of children online, and content safety more generally.
AI, particularly the oversight of the risks associated with it, was a topic raised in several of this year's proposals. Six years ago, in 2018, we were one of the first companies to publish AI principles, which guide our bold and responsible approach to AI. Since 2019, we have consistently provided transparency into how we implement these principles across our products and services. As John mentioned earlier, our board of directors collaborates closely with Sundar and the management team to oversee our company's AI development and strategy, ensuring that emerging issues are addressed, from protecting user privacy and safety to upholding human rights and safeguarding children online. Protecting children online is paramount and profoundly important work for us.
From YouTube Kids, a standalone app that provides a safer and simpler experience for our youngest users, to Google SafeSearch, which blurs explicit imagery as a default setting, we have invested heavily in technology, people, and systems needed to keep our community safe. When content violates YouTube's community guidelines, we remove it as quickly as possible using a combination of machine learning and human reviewers. Our investments in this area demonstrate our ability to quickly and effectively remove content that violates our policies. In Q1 of 2024, we removed 8.3 million videos for violating our policies. 96% of the videos removed were first flagged by machine learning technology, and the vast majority were removed before they received 10 views. We provide all of this information and much more about our enforcement efforts in our regularly updated YouTube Community Guidelines Transparency Report.
We have prioritized building detection technology, training specialized teams, and leading industry efforts to combat the exploitation and endangerment of minors. As AI advances, we know this work can't happen in a silo. Over the past decade, we have worked closely with child safety experts, including NGOs, industry peers, child development experts, and law enforcement to accelerate the fight against child sexual abuse and exploitation, or CSAE, content. Our commitment to the design of generative AI principles developed by nonprofit organizations Thorn and All Tech Is Human is a recent example of how we collaborate to prevent the creation, dissemination, and promotion of AI-generated CSAE. On the issue of content safety more broadly, we are unwavering in our dedication to providing useful and high-quality information to our users, especially in the crucial areas like health and elections.
Our robust policies and procedures actively protect users and society from the risk of mis- and disinformation, including those generated by AI. We continually strive to improve the quality of our generative AI models and applications through both pre-launch testing and ongoing fine-tuning, which allows us to identify safety risks and improve model performance over time. We transparently report the outcomes of these efforts in disclosures such as our annual Ads Safety Report, Digital Services Act Systemic Risk Assessment, and our EU Code of Practice on Disinformation Report. On these important issues and many more, we have continued to thoughtfully add to and enhance our disclosures in response to the stockholder process.
We recognize that the submission of proposals for vote at our annual meeting is one mechanism for our stockholders to convey their priorities and perspectives, and we carefully evaluated each proposal, considering alignment with our long-term interests and existing goals. We hope Alphabet's detailed responses in our proxy statement were helpful in informing your voting decisions. Because no further business is scheduled to come before the stockholders, I declare the polls for each matter voted upon at this meeting closed. I will now review the preliminary results on the matters brought before the meeting. I have been advised by the inspector of election that the nominees for election to the board of directors have been duly elected.
I've been further advised by the inspector of election that a majority of the shares of our Class A and Class B common stock entitled to vote and present at the meeting or represented by proxy voted in favor of the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP to act as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2024 fiscal year. Therefore, each of these proposals has been approved by our stockholders. I have also been advised by the inspector of election that a majority of the shares of our Class A and Class B common stock entitled to vote and present at the meeting or represented by proxy voted against proposals 3 through 14 described in our proxy statement. Therefore, none of these stockholder proposals has been approved by our stockholders.
As soon as possible after the meeting, we'll complete the final vote tabulations and we'll provide the final vote results on our investor relations website and in a filing with the SEC. That ends the official business of the meeting, and I declare the formal portion of our meeting adjourned. We have set aside time to respond to questions. We'd like to thank our stockholders for all of the questions submitted: John Hennessy, Chair of the Board, Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs, and Chief Legal Officer, will be answering questions. Okay, let's get started. We received a number of questions about AI, so we'll start there. More specifically, we have been asked about our AI strategy. How do we succeed given some early challenges?
This is Sundar. I'll answer this question. We've been investing in AI for more than a decade and innovating at every layer of the stack: research, product, infrastructure. I've made a lot of important progress across each, which I shared in my remarks. When working on something this big and this bold, challenges are part of the process and are to be expected. We are still in the early days of the AI platform shift. The underlying technology is evolving rapidly, and I see it as a long-term journey for everyone across the field. The most important thing we can do is to focus on building great products and developing them responsibly.
From our foundation of research leadership and technical advances, including multimodality and long context, to our global product footprint that gives us opportunities to bring helpful AI to people everywhere, to our world-class infrastructure that makes it all possible. Through all of these efforts, we are constantly listening to feedback, making improvements, learning, and iterating. It's what made us successful for the last 25 years and why we'll continue to be successful with this approach.
Thanks, Sundar. Okay, on to the next set of questions. A stockholder asked, what is our position on AI safety? Also, what are we doing to avoid creating or reinforcing bias?
This is Kent, and I can take this question. The AI work that Sundar just discussed reflects our AI principles, which we published back in 2018. Those principles say that above all, we want this technology to be socially beneficial. They also say that we will build and test our AI products for safety and to avoid reinforcing bias. So before we introduce new technology, we do our best to anticipate and test for a wide variety of safety and security risks. We do this by developing policies on the types of inappropriate or misleading or illegal content we want to avoid, or the kinds of inappropriate prompts where we don't want to show a response. We also do it by doing red teaming, a kind of adversarial testing against a range of risks, including cybersecurity vulnerabilities, as well as challenges like discrimination, fraud, or abuse.
We do it by monitoring and fine-tuning our services based on user feedback, as well as new research and applications. On the question about bias, we've developed tools to identify and mitigate unfair bias in our models. This is an active area of research, and we publish several papers and regularly consult with others. To help people evaluate information from our services, we've done things like adding About This Result and About This Image to our search results, creating ways to help people double-check Gemini responses, and developing SynthID to embed metadata and digital watermarking. We're continuing to work across the industry on these issues with initiatives like the Tech Accord, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, C2PA, the Frontier Model Forum, and the Partnership on AI.
Thanks, Kent. Moving on to the next question. We've been asked about our capital return strategy and whether we considered implementing a dividend reinvestment plan or DRIP.
This is Ruth. I'll take this one. In terms of our capital allocation framework, our primary use of capital is to invest to support organic growth, and we're really excited about our near and long-term opportunities, in particular with the application of AI across our products and services, as Sundar and John both noted, and we are investing in the business for long-term growth. We then evaluate both acquisitions and strategic investments, and finally, we look at returning capital to shareholders. We were very pleased to announce in April that we would add a quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share to our capital return program, as well as a new $70 billion authorization in share repurchases.
To address the second part of your question about dividend reinvestment plans, we understand that a number of brokerages will offer the option for reinvestment of our dividend, so please check with your broker for their reinvestment options.
Thanks, Ruth. Next, a stockholder asked us to elaborate on the enforcement of YouTube's community guidelines and more specifically asked, what does YouTube do to prevent bias against content belonging to individuals or groups based on political viewpoints or other attributes?
This is Kent again, and I can answer this question. Our commitment to responsibility on YouTube starts with our community guidelines, which set the rules of the road for content that's allowed on YouTube. For instance, YouTube has published policies against misinformation, scams, impersonation, spam, harassment, and other abusive content, and we terminate channels that repeatedly or egregiously violate those policies. Our automated flagging systems quickly flag content that may violate our community guidelines, and we have thousands of reviewers around the world who work 24/7 to enforce our policies. Those policies apply equally for everyone, and we enforce them consistently, regardless of the content creator's political views, and our recommendation system is not designed to promote, to demote, or to filter content based on political perspectives.
In 2018, we issued our first community guidelines enforcement report, which we update quarterly to increase transparency and accountability around our efforts to protect YouTube viewers. One measure of that work is the violative view rate, which helps us estimate what percentage of views on YouTube come from content that violates our policies. To give you a sense of scale, over the past year, that rate was roughly 0.1%, meaning that only about one view in a thousand was of content that violated our community guidelines. YouTube continues to focus on removing violative content, raising up authoritative sources, and rewarding trusted creators.
Thanks, Kent. Next, a stockholder asked, how is Google continuing to create a culture that is mission-first?
This is Sundar. I'll answer this one. We are fortunate to have a timeless mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This mission is what attracts amazing employees to work at Google, and we are lucky to have such passionate and talented employees around the world who are focused on solving big challenges and improving people's lives. As a company, it's so important that we stay focused on that mission during a dynamic time like this. I recently sent an email to the company reemphasizing the importance of being mission-first, and if we can stay focused on helping people with our mission and driving focus there with urgency and dedication, there's no limit to what we can achieve, and we'll continue to build on our strong business foundation.
Thanks, Sundar. We have time for one last question. A stockholder has asked about board refreshment and how the board considers balancing the benefits of director continuity with the need for fresh perspectives.
This is John. I'm happy to answer this one. Our board is composed of seasoned leaders and visionary technologists, including Google's founders, who together bring broad knowledge, deep experience, and specialized expertise that enables us to help guide and oversee the company's increasingly complex global business and strategic decisions. We also have several newer faces within the boardroom, supporting a balance between long-term understanding of our business and fresh perspectives. Three independent directors, Frances Arnold, Marty Chavez, and Robin Washington, have joined us in the past several years. Our Nominations Committee regularly assesses the appropriate size and composition of the board, the needs of the board and the respective committees, and the qualifications of candidates in light of those needs.
We also believe that director diversity strengthens the board's functioning, and we consider diversity across a multitude of factors, including professional experiences, education, race and ethnicity, gender, age, cultural background, among other factors. Having the right individuals in the boardroom is more critical than ever, and we've adopted a thoughtful approach to board refreshment to ensure our directors' expertise aligns with the company's strategy and long-term value creation. The collective experience of our directors, both long-serving and new, across technology, science, business, and academia, is invaluable as we help guide Alphabet's progress during this transformational time. With that, I want to thank all of you for your questions that you've submitted. We truly appreciate you taking the time to join us and for your continued support of Alphabet. Take care, and we'll see you next year.