Welcome to Alphabet's 2025 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.
I see infinite possibilities with Flow.
What manner of magic is that?
AI Mode is the biggest revolution since the search engine was invented.
You tell Gemini exactly what you want built, and it builds it for you.
No.
Coding with Gemini 2.5 Pro, it is awesome.
Project Mariner is going to change how we use our browsers.
It's an AI agent that gets things done for you.
NotebookLM's Mind Map completely transforms learning.
Why is this person following me wherever I walk?
That's just your shadow.
Wait, we're going to turn right.
AI is completely changing how we fight fires.
Generative media is expanding the boundaries of creativity.
It was magic the first time I saw this.
This isn't just another tool.
It's a game changer.
This is just, like, mind-blowing to me.
The potential's almost limitless.
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining Alphabet's 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I'm John Hennessy, and I have the privilege of serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of Alphabet. I will 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 share how we're meeting this moment with relentless innovation in AI. We'll then hear from Kathryn Hall, our Head of Corporate Legal and Assistant Corporate Secretary of Alphabet, 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. Reflecting on the past year, our board continues to be deeply impressed by Alphabet's innovation and progress. In 2024, the company made significant advances, especially in AI. Alphabet maintained its leadership position while also delivering real-world benefits to billions of users. The board is pleased with the company's industry-leading AI work and with the focus and dedication of its world-class research and engineering teams. Last year, we saw remarkable progress, from the ongoing evolution of the company's Gemini models to the start of the agentic era. Google's ability to turn research into helpful products is clear. You can see how AI is being integrated into its core products and how AI has become central to the company's growing cloud business.
This impressive work was evident at the annual developer event last month, Google I/O, where the company showcased its use of cutting-edge technology to create intelligent and personalized products for users. This includes advances in the Gemini 2.5 series of models, the most intelligent to date, as well as the introduction of AI mode for everyone in the U.S. Sundar will talk more about these innovations shortly. Our board continues to be impressed by Alphabet's ability and speed in bringing the breakthroughs and research to products. We continue to work with management to ensure there is robust governance to develop this important technology thoughtfully and responsibly. This includes controls and frameworks around AI development, stringent privacy and safety policies, rigorous risk assessments, and transparent oversight. We have always valued the helpful role of Google's products and platforms.
They serve as avenues for individuals to access information and express themselves freely. These platforms help facilitate global communication and foster connection, learning, debate, and the exchange of ideas. The board supports the company in its ongoing work to ensure that these platforms remain open and accessible while also addressing important considerations around safety and responsibility. Our board brings a wide range of expertise, and we work closely and collaboratively with Sundar and the management team to oversee the company's strategic direction and long-term investments. We are confident that the company will navigate the evolving technological landscape and continue to create value for our stockholders and make the world's information universally accessible and useful. Our board is committed to understanding our investors' perspectives across all matters related to Alphabet, in close partnership with the investor relations and legal teams.
We value the input and support from all of Alphabet's stakeholders, from our employees and users to our partners and stockholders. The board considers these perspectives deeply important in shaping Alphabet's future. On behalf of my fellow directors, we want to thank you for your continued trust and support as we move forward in this technological shift and build this exciting future together. With that, I'll turn it over to Sundar.
Thanks, John. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It's been an extraordinary first half of 2025. Today, I'll focus on our AI-first product innovation that touches everything we do and how those advances drive progress across our businesses. Let's start briefly with the momentum in our businesses. In Search, we saw continued double-digit revenue growth in the first quarter. Cloud is growing rapidly with leadership across infrastructure, agents, and more. YouTube is celebrating its 20th birthday by claiming the top TV viewing spot for the last three months running, according to Nielsen. Subscriptions surpass 270 million paid subscriptions, with YouTube and Google One as key drivers. We also introduced a new subscription plan, AI Ultra, with the highest access to our most capable AI models and premium features. I want to spend the rest of my remarks focused on the AI opportunity ahead. First, model progress.
We have seen a step change in performance over the last 18 months. With Gemini 2.5 Pro, we continue to push the frontier of intelligence across key AI benchmarks. Model progress is enabled by our world-class infrastructure. Ironwood, our newest seventh-generation TPU, is purpose-built to power thinking and inferential AI workloads at scale. It delivers 10 times the performance over the previous generation and packs an incredible 42.5 exaflops compute per pod. It is coming to customers later this year. Our global infrastructure helps us deliver dramatically faster and more capable models, all while prices continue to come down. Our goal is to deliver more intelligence to everyone, everywhere. The world is responding, adopting AI faster than ever before. We are now processing 480 trillion monthly tokens, a nearly 50x increase in just one year.
Over 7 million developers are now building with the Gemini API, a 5x growth since last I/O, and our enterprise usage on Vertex AI is up more than 40x. Google Cloud is powering startups, enterprises, and governments around the world with our leading infrastructure and cutting-edge AI, including our models and agents. The Gemini app now has over 400 million monthly active users. In search, AI overviews have successfully scaled to 1.5 billion monthly users. People are not only asking more queries, but also more complex ones. In our biggest markets, like the U.S. and India, AI overviews are driving over 10% growth in the types of queries that show them. What is exciting is how the growth increases over time. This has been one of the most successful launches in search in the past decade. For an end-to-end AI search experience, we are introducing the all-new AI mode.
It's a total reimagining of search with more advanced reasoning. The response so far has been really positive. People have also been finding ads with AI overviews helpful to quickly connect with relevant products and services. We are now testing ads in AI mode as well. Search is one example of how decades of AI research are becoming reality for people around the world. Let me touch on a couple of others. Project Starline, our breakthrough 3D video technology, has become Google Beam. This new AI-first video communications platform transforms 2D streams into a realistic 3D experience so you can have more natural and immersive conversations. In collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the first devices will be available for early customers later this year. Capabilities from Project Astra, which is an early research project that understands the world around you, are starting to come to our products.
Gemini Live now includes Project Astra's camera and screen sharing capabilities, now available to everyone on Android and iOS. Looking forward, one of the next frontiers where we will make progress is with agents that can interact with the world and get things done on your behalf. Agentic capabilities are coming to Chrome, Search, and the Gemini app. For example, an experimental version of Agent Mode in the Gemini app is coming soon to subscribers. With it, Gemini can handle complex tasks like finding and scheduling apartment tours by interacting with websites and services. Finally, we are making AI truly useful through personalization. We are working to bring this to life with something we call personal context. With your permission, Gemini models can draw from relevant information across your Google apps to deliver more helpful responses.
One example is personalized smart replies in Gmail, which can draft replies that sound like you, pulling information from your past emails and files, such as meeting notes and more. This feature will be available in Gmail this summer for subscribers. We believe personal context will be incredibly helpful across Search, Docs, Gemini, and more. Beyond the impact we make through our products, we see AI having a significant real-world impact today. With partners, we are building Firesat, a constellation of satellites using AI and imagery to provide near-real-time wildfire insights. The first satellite is now in orbit. When fully operational, the system will update every 20 minutes, able to spot a fire as small as a one-car garage. Waymo recently hit an exciting milestone, delivering 10 million paid rides safely since it started and continues to expand to more places like Austin and Atlanta.
We are also testing internationally in Japan. We are also innovating in other areas like energy. To help accelerate the clean energy transition across the U.S., we signed the first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors to be developed by Kairos Power. We are leaning into this moment of massive innovation, and I'm really excited for what's ahead. I want to give a huge thank you to all our partners, Googlers, and shareholders who make it possible. With that, I'll turn it over 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 Solutions, who will act as our inspector of election, and Chris Chastain 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 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 8, 2025, 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. Ten directors will be elected at today's meeting. The directors elected today will hold office until the 2026 annual meeting of stockholders.
Our board of directors has nominated the following individuals: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, John L. Hennessy, Francis 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 2025 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 2025 fiscal year. The next 12 items being submitted are stockholder proposals that were included in our proxy statement.
We do not intend to rebut each of these proposals following their presentation, but note that our proxy statement 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. In addition, we have a stockholder proposal that was not included in our proxy statement but will be presented today. The first stockholder proposal is being brought by John Shiveden. I recognize John Shiveden for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Mr. Shiveden, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Mr. Shiveden's line.
Mr. Shiveden, your line is now open.
Hello, this is John Shiveden. Proposal three, shareholder right deck by written consent. Shareholders request that the board of directors take the necessary steps to permit written consent by the shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize an action at a meeting at which all shareholders or all shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting. This includes shareholder ability to initiate any appropriate topic for written consent. Shareholders acting by written consent and shareholders calling for a special shareholder meeting are two ways shareholders can bring attention to important business matters between annual meetings. It is almost unheard of for shareholders of any major company to act by written consent or to call for a special shareholder meeting.
The reason to have these rights is that with these rights in place, companies are more likely to engage productively with their shareholders because shareholders have these two alternative means to bring attention to important business matters between annual meetings. Please vote yes, shareholder right to act by written consent proposal three.
Thank you, Mr. Shiveden. The next proposal is being brought by the Vermont Pension Investment Commission. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Maureen O'Brien for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Shareholders and members of the board, my name is Maureen O'Brien, and I want to thank you for allowing me to present proposal item number four on this year's ballot. I'm here today on behalf of the Vermont Pension Investment Commission. Senior executive pay should be aligned with operational results and the individual contributions of senior executives, not financial engineering. Stock buybacks directly affect many of the financial ratios used as performance metrics for incentive pay. For example, buybacks can increase earnings per share, return on assets, and return on equity. While stock buybacks may also boost stock prices in the short term, we're concerned that they can deprive companies of capital necessary for creating long-term growth. In our view, senior executives are responsible for improving our company's operational performance, whereas the board is responsible for determining when stock buybacks are appropriate.
Academic research has shown that buybacks decrease capital expenditures and R&D spending, resulting in lower growth in the long run. Research also shows a rise in buybacks when EPS targets would have otherwise gone unmet. Our company spent $62 billion on share buybacks in 2023, but only $45 billion on research and development and $32 billion on capital expenditures. Our company's executive compensation is primarily driven by total shareholder return, a financial ratio that can be inflated by stock buybacks. For all these reasons, we ask the board to adopt a policy that financial performance metrics shall be adjusted to exclude the impact of share repurchases when determining the amount or vesting of any senior executive incentive compensation grant or award. We ask for your vote in favor. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Broadridge Financial Solutions on behalf of Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Todd Russ for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
I'm Todd Russ, State Treasurer for the State of Oklahoma. As Chairman of the Board of Investors for Oklahoma's Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Fund, filer of item number five, asking Alphabet to commit to political neutrality in its charitable partnerships. Firstly, I'd like to thank Alphabet for walking back many of its divisive DEI initiatives at Google. Ordinary American shareholders, thank you for these common-sense choices. It's a crucial point in accomplishing Google's mission, building together for everyone. If Google wants to build for everyone, then political neutrality should be part of that too, especially when it comes to its charitable partnerships. It's not. Google is a platinum-level sponsor of activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign and receives a perfect score on its Corporate Equality Index. This index requires companies to take radical actions, such as covering puberty blockers for children in the guise of healthcare access.
There's nothing pro-business or pro-fiduciary about using shareholder resources to support this kind of radical activism. More and more companies, from Walmart to McDonald's, are moving away from partnerships with radical partisan organizations like HRC. Why? Because political neutrality is the best practice. It avoids controversy, protects brand reputation, and focuses on business, not increasingly controversial social activism. Shareholders are right to expect this company to step back from these radical partnerships and commit to political neutrality going forward. It's time for Alphabet to ditch activism and recenter on being the global tech leader its shareholders need it to be. That's what proposal number five is about. It's a chance for Alphabet to rebuild trust with shareholders and focus on what matters: fairness, neutrality, and smart business. On behalf of ordinary American shareholders, now is the time to truly build for everyone. Thank you.
Thank you. 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 Executive Director of the Free Enterprise Project, which is part of the National Center for Public Policy Research. The National Center is the proponent of proposal six, which asks the board to consider ending the company's participation in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. Why should Alphabet consider ending participation in the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index? As noted in our proposal, many believe that HRC's CEI functions like a social credit score for corporations, with the threat of a bad score being wielded by HRC against corporations to force them to do the political bidding of radical activists, including sowing gender confusion in youth, encouraging permanent surgical procedures on confused and vulnerable teens, and effectively eliminating girls' and women's sports and private spaces. This is likely why so many major corporations have recently severed ties with HRC.
In its opposition statement, Alphabet argues that the proposal inappropriately seeks to undermine the company's ability to manage its ordinary business operations. If this were truly the case, the company could have simply excluded our proposal on that basis under the SEC's ordinary business rule. The fact that it did not even try to do so severely undermines the validity of this objection. Alphabet also argues that its engagement with organizations does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of their agendas. However, in addition to cooperating with HRC's survey, Alphabet is also a platinum partner of HRC, which HRC proudly touts as evidence that Alphabet provides, quote, "generous support of the work of the Human Rights Campaign," end quote.
Furthermore, it's hard not to read an endorsement into the fact that the company cooperates on HRC's survey while refusing to do the same for Alliance Defending Freedom's Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which is the most obvious survey a company could cooperate with if its participation in the CEI was not an endorsement of HRC's agenda. For what it's worth, Alphabet's score on ADF's index, based on publicly available information, is 6% out of 100%. In opposing our proposal, Alphabet is defiantly refusing to even consider ending its participation in the CEI, which is all our proposal asks. In light of this, Alphabet should at least answer the following questions. First, what is a woman? Second, can a man become a woman simply by saying so? Third, can a child be born in the wrong body?
Alphabet arguably breaches its duties to shareholders by supporting HRC as it does without having answered these questions. For all these reasons, I ask you to support proposal six.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Trillium ESG Global Equity Fund as lead filer, along with other co-filers. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Andrea Ranger for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning to the board, management, and fellow shareholders. My name is Andrea Ranger, Director of Shareholder Advocacy at Trillium Asset Management, and I hereby move proposal number seven, which asks Alphabet's board of directors to provide additional information illustrating if and how the company will meet its 2030 climate goals. First, we commend Alphabet's leadership and board for addressing the company's climate risk by setting targets to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, reduce 50% of its operational and value chain emissions, and source 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. We also appreciate that Alphabet was the first major company to match 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy. Unfortunately, the company's greenhouse gas emissions have increased substantially since 2019. According to Alphabet, its escalating emissions are primarily due to the heavy electricity use by the data centers supporting its AI products.
We know that the path to expanding AI capabilities and products is dynamic and challenging to predict. Plans to construct and operate new data centers may change. However, this dynamism suggests the need for Alphabet to be even more clear about its path towards its 2030 targets. Otherwise, investors and customers may feel surprised or underinformed should the company fall short, potentially subjecting it to reputational and competitive risk as well as unwelcome management scrutiny. In our view, meaningful disclosure would include scenario analysis that includes how the macro environment could impact Alphabet's climate progress and waterfall charts that describe Alphabet's anticipated greenhouse gas emissions reduction per strategy, such as data center optimization, renewable energy, or nuclear power. Investors could also benefit from understanding key assumptions and uncertainties associated with reaching Alphabet's targets, as well as any contingency plans it has.
Investors are increasingly seeking this kind of information now being captured in climate transition plans, which allows them to assess how companies are managing the complexities of reaching their climate targets. Fortunately, transition plans issued by Ball Corporation, National Grid, Unilever, Levi Strauss, General Mills, and Intel model disclosures that can serve as templates for Alphabet to adopt in its own reporting. Finally, we believe these additional disclosures are critical in helping investors understand how board and management are navigating the business opportunities afforded by the rollout of new AI products with existing climate commitments. Indeed, the billions of dollars invested in AI model development, training and testing, microchips, and the data centers housing them call for more transparency around Alphabet's plans rather than less. Thank you. Trillium Asset Management urges you to vote for proposal number seven.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the Northstar Asset Management funded pension plan as lead filer and Mercy Investment Services as co-filer. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Will Hayworth for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
My name is Will Hayworth. I'm a shareholder, senior site reliability engineer at Google, and member of the Alphabet Workers Union presenting on behalf of Northstar Asset Management located in Boston. I am presenting resolution number eight, 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, Northstar 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 52.1% 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 creating 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 Googlers should share the success of the company, but without voting rights, employees cannot extend oversight and are subject to repeated layoffs and other interferences.
Once a champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, Alphabet publicly announced in February that it is rolling back many of its diversity practices, including ending hiring goals for representation. Disturbingly, the company has retaliated against employees who have raised ethical concerns. Just last year, Google fired 50 workers for staging a sit-in against its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. Google's own review of the contract warned that the infrastructure could be used to facilitate human rights violations with very limited visibility to the company. 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 like me, 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, Northstar urges you to vote for proxy item number eight, 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 Zevin Asset Management on behalf of Denise Bergman and Pamela Rogers. I recognize Marcella Pinilla for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Ms. Pena, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Ms. Pena's line.
Ms. Pena, your line is now open.
Thank you. Greetings, fellow shareholders and members of the board. My name is Marcella Pena, Director of Sustainable Investing at Zevin Asset Management, and we are long-term shareholders of Alphabet stock. We urge shareholders to vote for proposal nine, calling on Alphabet's board to commission an independent third-party report assessing how the company identifies, evaluates, and mitigates human rights risks related to the customer use of its products and services that are used for surveillance, censorship, and military applications in conflict-affected and high-risk areas, commonly known as CARAs. Why is this necessary? Because Alphabet's public commitment to human rights and transparency is not yet matched by the level of governance and disclosure expected in these high-risk environments. The company's technologies are being used in some of the world's most volatile contexts, where their misuse has been tied to credible reports of censorship, surveillance, and violations of international humanitarian law.
For example, in India, government exploitation of data from Alphabet services has been linked to the suppression of dissent. In Gaza, Alphabet's AI tools have reportedly been deployed by the Israeli military during active operations. In Russia, YouTube has allegedly been used to mislead vulnerable communities into military conscription. In Saudi Arabia, cloud infrastructure may be enabling invasive surveillance. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, Alphabet's technologies are increasingly integral to a system that is widely criticized for human rights abuses. Alphabet's disclosure on its customer due diligence process in CARAs is currently insufficient. The company's recent revision of its AI principles, specifically the removal of language referencing surveillance and weapons use, has only heightened concerns. There is a growing momentum behind responsible business conduct. Global frameworks from the United Nations to the EU and US governments now call for enhanced due diligence in conflict zones.
Internal whistleblowers who have raised concerns over Alphabet's complicity in human rights abuses in CARAs also signal to this momentum. Leading investors managing trillions in assets under management have cited conflict and human rights risks as central to long-term shareholder value preservation. We are not asking for trade secrets. We are asking for meaningful transparency that aligns with Alphabet's own stated values and international standards, given the potential for Alphabet's complicity in human rights abuses through the sanctioned use of its products. To shareholders voting against this proposal, this is not a neutral or passive decision. It signals a willingness to overlook credible human rights risks and the escalating legal, financial, and reputational consequences that may follow. This undermines Alphabet's stated commitments and exposes long-term value to unnecessary risks. Upholding fiduciary duty today requires foresight and responsibility, especially when the stakes are this high.
Ms. Pinilla, your time has expired. Can you please conclude your remarks?
Proposal number nine is an opportunity not just to mitigate risk, but to lead. For all these reasons, we respectfully urge you to vote for proposal nine. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Pinilla. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Inspire Investing on behalf of William C. Cunningham. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Tim Schwarzenberger for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Hello, my name is Tim Schwarzenberger, and I'm a portfolio manager at Inspire Investing, the world's largest provider of faith-based ETFs. I'm here to present proposal number 10, requesting a report on the risk of discrimination in Alphabet's generative AI systems. Alphabet is a global leader in artificial intelligence. Its gen AI tools, like Gemini, are shaping how billions of people access information and engage with the world. With that power comes a responsibility to protect fundamental rights. This proposal addresses a growing concern: Alphabet's reliance on vague and ideologically driven "misinformation" and "hate speech" policies to shape AI outputs. These filters have restricted lawful content on issues such as abortion, gender identity, and religious belief, raising serious civil liberties concerns. When left unchecked, such practices can create legal and reputational risks for the company. These risks are no longer theoretical.
Meta Platforms is facing a $5 million lawsuit alleging that its AI content governance system engaged in religious and political viewpoint discrimination. Separately, OpenAI is being sued by The New York Times for allegedly scraping proprietary content without permission to train its AI models, highlighting the escalating litigation around gen AI practices. Alphabet's board opposes this proposal, citing existing AI principles and transparency reports. These stand in stark contrast to Gemini's prohibition on so-called hate speech and misinformation and recent public controversy around Gemini's racially discriminatory image generation. As public backlash to the Gemini platform has shown, these risks are real, and they're already undermining trust. This proposal does not seek to eliminate content policies or redesign Alphabet's AI. It simply asks for a report: how might current systems impact civil liberties, and what risk could that pose to the company and its shareholders?
With lawmakers, regulators, and the public demanding AI accountability, Alphabet has an opportunity to lead. Transparency isn't a concession. It's a strategic advantage. It builds trust, reduces risk, and aligns the company with long-term shareholder interests. We respectfully urge you to vote for proposal number 10. Thank you.
Thank you. 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. Artificial intelligence is revealing itself as one of the most transformative innovations in modern economic history, with power to improve everything from healthcare to financial services, but only if it is built on trust. AI thrives on data, yet that hunger tempts developers to harvest vast amounts of information that may be obtained unethically or illegally. Alphabet stands at the very center of this dilemma. The company has disclosed that its Gemini models are trained on user data collected on its platforms, including Google Search and YouTube, platforms where people seek information and enjoy entertainment, not realizing that they are providing source material for commercial AI systems. Alphabet's revised privacy policy now allows an expansive range of personal photos, videos, and texts to be funneled into its models without explicit consent. Alphabet already faces legal and regulatory backlash for poor privacy in its AI initiatives.
Meanwhile, the integration of Gemini-powered features such as AI overviews in Search, Help Me Write in Gmail, and the Gemini sidebar across Google Workspace magnifies the risk that sensitive queries, private emails, or proprietary business documents could be ingested and resurfaced in unexpected ways, exposing the company to class actions, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage that no marketing budget can cure. Consumers consistently tell pollsters they do not trust companies to handle their data. Meanwhile, McKinsey finds firms that lead on privacy gain a competitive advantage over their competitors, while laggards bleed users and revenue. Shareholders, therefore, have a clear interest in understanding how Alphabet acquires, vets, and deploys external information, and whether adequate safeguards exist to prevent misuse.
Proposal number 11 asks only for a straightforward, annually updated report describing the material risks of improper data sourcing, the controls in place to mitigate them, and the metrics by which effectiveness is measured. Transparent disclosure will help protect Alphabet's historic valuation, reassure billions of users, and demonstrate that the company intends to win the AI race without abandoning the principles that first made its services indispensable. A concise audit will cost little, yet yield outsized returns in goodwill, compliance readiness, and long-term value for both the company and its global community. I urge my fellow shareholders to vote for proposal number 11. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Shareholder Association for Research and Education on behalf of the United Church of Canada Pension Plan as lead filer, along with other co-filers. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Anders Schelde for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning, shareholders. My name is Anders Schelde. I am the Chief Investment Officer at Academiker Pension. I'm here today to move proposal 12, filed by Academiker Pension, share on behalf of the United Church of Canada Pension Plan and nine other shareholders of Alphabet across North America and Europe. 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, shareholders have been engaging with Alphabet on AI-driven targeted advertising and the risk that such technology may pose to the company and its shareholders. In 2023 and 2024, shareholders filed a similar proposal at Alphabet, receiving over 47% support from Class A shareholders both years. Despite such strong support, there has not been any visible indication regarding Alphabet's intention to implement the requested assessment.
For shareholders, the business case is clear. Advertising is critical to the company's business, with online advertising accounting for more than 75% of Alphabet's revenue. Alphabet's ad business, including Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Google Network, has grown rapidly in recent years, reaching more than $264 billion in 2024. Research, however, has shown that targeted advertising technologies can negatively impact human rights, including violating privacy, freedom of expression, and perpetuating systemic discrimination and inequality. Such adverse impacts and lack of sufficient human rights oversight and due diligence may expose the company and, by extension, its shareholders, to significant reputational, legal, and regulatory risk. Yet, we do not believe that Alphabet has demonstrated to shareholders a robust due diligence system to identify, address, and prevent the adverse human rights impacts stemming from its targeted advertising technology.
Alphabet has a 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, in particular if the scale and scope of the impacts are likely to be important. As Alphabet's targeted advertising practices have global ramifications and impacts, conducting a human rights impact assessment is the first step in this process. Fellow shareholders, I move the proposal and ask for your support. We look forward to a more constructive engagement with the company so that Alphabet can effectively manage the risk associated with its targeted advertising technology. Thank you.
Thank you. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Proxy Impact on behalf of the Bros Family Investments LLC. I recognize Michael Passoff for a period of three minutes to present this proposal. Mr. Passoff, I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Mr. Passoff's line.
Mr. Passoff, your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. I'm Michael Passoff, CEO of Proxy Impact, and I'm here on behalf of Bros Family Investments. I'm here to move proposal number 13, which asks the board to report to shareholders on whether Alphabet is aligning its lobbying and political influence activities with its child safety policies and commitments. In 2023, Alphabet published its legislative framework to protect children and teens online.
We welcome that and its promise to respect the best interests of children and teens, provide age-appropriate controls, content moderation tools, and oversight and accountability. Since that was published, big tech companies have seen over 1,000 lawsuits and dozens of state, federal, and international regulatory efforts regarding online child safety harms. This response from parents, school districts, child safety experts, law enforcement, state attorneys general, U.S. Congress, and the European Parliament has come about because big tech companies have repeatedly failed to live up to their promises to protect kids. Alphabet's legislative framework to protect kids online appears to be another failed policy based on the multiple news reports describing how Alphabet is a leader in lobbying against child safety legislation. The Wall Street Journal reported that Alphabet took a leadership role in lobbying against the Derailing the Kids Online Safety Act, also known as KOSA.
KOSA was one of the few issues in Congress last year that had almost unanimous bipartisan support and would require companies to prevent or mitigate child risk, including suicide, eating disorders, and substance abuse. KOSA legislation was just reintroduced into the Senate, so how will our company be lobbying this time? It was also reported that Alphabet has sought carve-outs for mandatory age verification legislation, and that Alphabet invested millions to oppose the New York Child Data Protection Act and the New York Safe Kids Act, which targeted addictive online content. Alphabet has also lobbied against child safety legislation in Australia, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. The European Digital Services Act will make identifying, recording, and removing child sexual abuse materials mandatory. The U.K. Online Safety Bill aims to keep internet users, particularly children, safe from fraudulent and harmful contacts.
You can either be for making the internet a safe place for children and teens, or you can continue to be one of the world's biggest lobbyists against online child safety policies, but you can't be both. Alphabet's board needs to step in and review the significant misalignment between its lobbying and child safety policies. Either Alphabet will continue to treat children as collateral damage for increased advertising revenue and app sales, or Alphabet can enact a viable and integrated child safety policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Passoff. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Boston Common Asset Management on behalf of the Boston Common ESG Impact U.S. Equity Fund as lead filer, along with other co-filers. The proponents have submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Lauren Compere for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
I'm Lauren Compere, Managing Director at Boston Common Asset Management. We seek your support for proposal 14th on Alphabet's 2025 Proxy Statement, which asks Alphabet to issue a report including a quantitative assessment of how the company has improved its performance globally regarding child safety impacts and actual harm reduction to children on its platforms. While the company lists steps it has taken to improve child safety, it has no publicly available child safety or harm reduction performance metrics for investors to judge the effectiveness of its tools, policies, and actions. The U.S. Surgeon General called for social media warning labels due to its impact on kids' mental health. Forty-two states have sued Alphabet as the parent company, claiming YouTube is intentionally addictive and harms kids' mental health. YouTube has been linked to live streaming and housing child sexual abuse exploitation material.
A December 2024 New York Times article cites that Google's smartphone apps can allow parents and other abusers to connect with pedophiles who pay to watch and direct criminal behavior. In 2022, a Harvard study cited YouTube generated the highest ad revenue out of all the platforms from users 12 and under and derived 27% of its overall revenue from users under 18. While Alphabet advocates in its opposition statement that its transparency efforts continue to advance to meet regulatory requirements in places like the U.K., E.U., and Australia, they are insufficient and exclude a key market, the U.S. Alphabet has been transparent in its opposition for stronger U.S. regulation to protect children online.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Alphabet had been a leader in the tech industry's opposition to the Kids Online Safety Act, which would assign to platforms what it calls a duty of care, essentially putting a legal onus on them to take steps to address mental health disorders, addiction-like behaviors, bullying, sexual exploitation, and more. This legislation was expected to pass, but a lobbying blitz primarily funded by Meta and Alphabet derailed the legislation, and KOSA never came to vote. Mr. Bessing, Co-CIO at PFA Pension and our co-filer, highlights that Alphabet has a responsibility to ensure the safety of children using its platforms and at the same time manage its exposure to regulatory and reputational risks. Adoption of this proposal will allow shareholders to better understand Alphabet's performance regarding child safety impacts and therefore our investment risks.
We urge investors to vote for proposal 14 at Alphabet's 2025 AGM.
Thank you. In addition to the 14 items of business described in our proxy statement, Rohi Paled has provided prior timely notice of his intent to present a proposal today in accordance with the advance notice provisions of our bylaws. The proponent did not seek to have the proposal included in our proxy statement for the meeting. This type of proposal is sometimes referred to as a floor proposal. To vote on this floor proposal, you must do so during the meeting by logging into our virtual meeting website and following the instructions on the screen. As a reminder, the polls are currently open and will close after the presentation of this final item. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the floor proposal.
I recognize Rohi Paled for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Hello. I'm here today to discuss AI-driven preloading of apps for Android, a proposal for a smarter way for Android to serve user content. The Android OS is designed to load an app with its activities into the device's memory only after user interaction, leading to content load latency due to network and device limitations. Incorporating AI-driven App preload capabilities can eliminate this delay by enabling the OS to proactively and seamlessly load apps and their activities into memory, delivering a latency-free experience. These app preload capabilities will leverage AI algorithms that track user content consumption patterns to intelligently preload apps the user is most likely to engage with, a powerful application of AI in everyday life.
This innovation will not only enhance user experience but will also strengthen Android's competitive edge, driving user growth and deeper ecosystem engagement, ultimately boosting shareholder value. Memory management is a core responsibility of an operating system, Android included. An app preloading extends the memory manager's arsenal with a new capability. The memory manager's goal is to bring memory to a state where the content most likely to be used is loaded. Currently, it can either keep the UI element in memory or release it. Full app preloading adds a third choice: launching an activity or set of activities preemptively, unlocking the full potential of Google's existing heuristic and predictive technology. Such a solution is technically feasible given existing research, fully launching apps proactively while being non-perceptible to the user and with no interference to the device's operation.
A preload API added to the Android SDK would allow apps to become preload aware and optimize the app's flow, while the heavy lifting of fully loading the UI and separating it from the user-visible environment is done by the OS behind the scenes. AI-driven app preloading could also optimize battery life and data efficiency by loading apps under favorable conditions, reducing wasted energy and data usage, leading to higher user retention and satisfaction. I propose the board to commission a report to assess the feasibility, costs, benefits, and shareholder value impact of integrating AI app preload capabilities into Android OS. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for presenting this floor proposal. We have invested significantly in innovative ways to manage performance, device resources, and battery life in ways that improve the Android experience for both users and developers.
This is important work that has been instrumental in delivering an unparalleled AI experience on Android. We know how important it is to enable users to complete tasks as quickly as possible, including shortening app launch times. Android already offers this OS-level capability in a way that balances performance and user privacy. We are aware of techniques like those proposed to try to predict and prepare the user's next app. However, employing such technologies increases power consumption and memory wear. We therefore are pursuing other techniques to accelerate the user's time to task completion. We are continuously analyzing and improving our overall power and performance, including app start times. Decisions regarding product features and capabilities are best executed by members of our management team who possess the necessary expertise and strategic insights, and our research and ongoing analysis indicates that our current approach is appropriate and effective.
Consequently, our board of directors believes that this proposal is not in the best interests of the company or our stockholders. As such, our board of directors recommends a vote against this proposal. The persons named as proxy holders, including myself, have discretionary authority in voting the proxies under Rule 14A-4C under the Exchange Act, and I hereby intend to exercise such discretion to vote against this proposal. 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 core issues raised in the various stockholder proposals presented today. Our commitment is and always has been to advance our company in ways that create strong, sustainable business outcomes and enhance stockholder value.
Every proposal is considered through this lens, assessing its alignment with our existing initiatives, our long-term strategic vision, and the most effective deployment of our resources to achieve our shared objectives. Our Board of Directors' recommendations on the proposals before you reflect this careful and principled evaluation. Many proposals call for additional reports. We are proud of our extensive track record of transparency and leadership on critical matters, including responsible AI, online child safety, and climate action. We firmly believe our significant ongoing initiatives demonstrate a profound commitment to transparency and progress and already fulfill, often exceeding, the underlying objectives of the proposals before us. We hope that Alphabet's detailed responses in our proxy statement have provided valuable insights to guide 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 2025 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 and against the floor proposal presented today. 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, and Halimah DeLaine Prado, General Counsel, will be answering questions. Okay, let's get started. We received a question regarding our company strategy. Specifically, what is our competitive advantage and how can we keep growing in an evolving AI-integrated ecosystem?
This is Sundar, I'll answer this question. We've been investing in AI for more than a decade now. I see our full-stack approach to AI innovation as a core differentiator and a major strength for the company. We are innovating across every layer of the AI stack. It starts with designing and building the underlying infrastructure and custom hardware like our own tensor processing units, our TPUs. This is what powers our fundamental AI research, building groundbreaking models like Gemini and accelerating discovery with breakthroughs like AlphaEvolve to help discover new algorithms and optimizations for open math and computer science problems. We then integrate these AI advancements deeply into our products that serve billions of users globally, like Search, YouTube, and Android, and also enable businesses and developers through platforms like Google Cloud. This end-to-end approach provides significant advantages.
Building our own hardware like TPUs, for instance, allows us to optimize for efficiency, driving down costs, and improving performance and latency. Innovating across the stack also allows us to move faster and maintain control over the technology's evolution. Ultimately, this full-stack capability enables us to translate cutting-edge research into useful products at scale and positions us uniquely to capitalize on the significant AI opportunity ahead.
Thanks, Sundar. Okay, moving on to the next question. A stockholder asked, what is our long-term business model for Waymo?
This is Sundar, I can take this question. We've been laser-focused on building the Waymo driver, a generalizable technology which gives us multiple paths to market and business models across geographies. Right now, we are focused on scaling our ride-hailing service, Waymo One. We are excited by the progress. As I mentioned in my remarks, Waymo One has now served over 10 million fully autonomous rides across San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, and Austin. It is also safely serving over a quarter of a million paid passenger trips each week, which is up 5x from a year ago. We've opened up paid service in Silicon Valley and recently won approval to operate in California's South Bay, including all of San Jose, Washington, D.C., and Miami, our future ride-hailing cities opening up in 2026. We're also making a lot of progress on two important capabilities for riders: airport access and freeway driving.
Doing all this well will require a successful ecosystem of partners. One example is our network and operations partnership with Uber, where Waymo has partnered with Uber to bring our service to Austin, and we plan to soon open up Atlanta as well. We're also building up a network of partners, including for maintenance of autonomous fleets, infrastructure including electric vehicle charging, and OEM partnerships. We are staying focused and making progress both in terms of safety and the experience, as well as scaling rapidly and developing a sustainable business model.
Thanks, Sundar. Next, we received a few questions related to content governance. First, we've been asked to elaborate on our work to manage harmful content and fight misinformation on our platforms.
This is Halimah. I will answer this one. We take the responsibility of preventing abuse on our platforms very seriously. We have comprehensive policies in place to address offensive and potentially harmful content, and we continually invest in technologies and teams to enforce these policies effectively. Our longstanding policies inform how we approach areas such as manipulated media, offensive materials, harassment, and incitement to violence, among others. Our approach involves a combination of human review and machine learning, allowing us to detect and remove content that violates our policies at scale while also protecting freedom of expression. Thousands of people around the globe work 24/7 to help enforce these policies in a clear and consistent way. For over a decade, we have leveraged a combination of human and machine learning classifiers and artificial intelligence to identify and remove content that violates our policies.
With the recent advances in our large language models, we are working to build faster and more adaptable enforcement systems. Early results indicate that this will enable us to take action even more quickly when new threats emerge. At the same time, with more people using artificial intelligence to create content, we are developing several new tools and policies to help our audiences identify AI-generated content. For example, last month at I/O, we launched SynthID Detector, a verification portal to quickly and efficiently help users determine if content or part of it was generated by Google's AI tools. Finally, we are committed to transparency in our content moderation practices, and we regularly publish reports on our enforcement efforts.
Thanks, Halimah. Staying on the topic of content governance, a stockholder asked about our efforts to surface high-quality information to voters during the electoral process.
This is Halimah. Again, I'll answer this question. We have been supporting and protecting elections across our products for years. 2024 saw a record-setting number of elections across the world, and we had a strong record of largely avoiding issues across our services. We remain deeply committed to this work. We apply new learnings with each cycle to improve our efforts. We continue our efforts to safeguard our platforms, help people make informed decisions, surface high-quality information to voters, preserve free expression, and equip campaigns with best-in-class security. We're doing this work with an increased focus on the role of AI. Like any emerging technology, AI presents new opportunities as well as challenges. In particular, our AI models enhance our abuse-fighting efforts, including our ability to enforce our policies at scale. We are also preparing for how it can be used to create deepfakes and other misleading information.
We're focused on providing people with high-quality and reliable information. We know that in the run-up and immediate period following elections, people need useful and relevant information to help them navigate and understand the electoral process. For example, on Search, we build our search ranking systems to surface the highest quality information available on the open web at the top of our results. For topics where quality information is particularly important, including civic information, we use external search quality raters to evaluate our results and ensure they reflect what people around the world consider to be high quality. We are transparent about how we define high-quality results. In the 2024 U.S. election, when users searched for information on candidates, the voter registration process, and where to vote in their states, they found aggregated resources and information from state election offices provided by authoritative partners.
Our teams seek to strike a balance between promoting free expression while avoiding abuse. To sum up, supporting elections is a core part of our responsibility to our users, and we continue to build on our efforts.
Thanks, Halimah. Relatedly, a stockholder asked us about the enforcement of YouTube's community guidelines. Halima, can you share how YouTube approaches these issues?
Sure. I can answer this question as well. Our commitment to responsibility on YouTube starts with our community guidelines, which set the rules of the road for the content that's allowed on YouTube. We systematically review and re-review all our policies to make sure we are drawing the line in the right place. We often consult with subject matter experts for insights on emerging trends. YouTube's community guidelines are complex to enforce at scale, as decisions require nuanced understanding of local languages and contexts. To help us consistently enforce our policy, we have expanded our review team's linguistic and subject matter expertise. We're also deploying machine learning to better detect potentially violative content to send for human review, applying lessons from our enforcement against other types of content like violent extremism.
While we inevitably sometimes make mistakes given the volumes involved, we have an appeals process for creators who believe their content was incorrectly removed. We evaluate our policies and enforcement guidelines on an ongoing basis. We will continue to consult with experts and the community and make changes as needed to both ensure compliance with the YouTube community guidelines and ensure everyone has a voice.
Thanks, Halimah. Lastly, a stockholder inquired about our director selection process and the criteria we consider.
This is John. I'm happy to answer that question as the Alphabet Board Chair. At Alphabet, we believe the strength of our board is paramount. We are committed to having the right individuals in the boardroom to navigate our complex global business. This means intentionally seeking a wide range of skills, experiences, and viewpoints. Our approach balances deep institutional knowledge with fresh external perspectives to provide effective strategic guidance and strong oversight of management, ensuring accountability to you, our stockholders. The Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee meticulously evaluates director candidates based on our board's evolving needs, optimal size and composition, and a candidate's qualifications. We prioritize qualities like integrity, sharp judgment, relevant business experience, and a deep understanding of our industry. Importantly, directors must be able to dedicate sufficient time and always act in the balanced best interests of all stockholders.
Our board is a powerful combination of seasoned leaders, scientists, and visionary technologists, including our founders. Their collective experience spans entrepreneurship, technology, finance, science, investment, and government, bringing a remarkable breadth of knowledge, expertise, and professional backgrounds. We believe this is invaluable as we help guide Alphabet's progress through this transformative time.
Thank you all for your questions. We appreciate your taking the time to join us for the annual meeting and for your continued support of Alphabet. Please take care, and we will see you next year.