Welcome to Alphabet's 2021 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. Our lesson today is...
Game forward.
Let's go.
Goodbye.
You're going to take a turn? No, no, that's okay. There's something to this creature that's very unusual. There's something special about it.
A small octopus.
I'm saying an octopus arm.
What octopus are you made of?
No, I'll see more of octopuses.
What's going on with your spaghetti?
This is an arm.
This is an arm.
An octopus can change the color of its skin.
All right, check this out.
Whoa! Look at it floating.
Look out, Arlie.
That green octopus on your head.
What?
You need to figure out what your passion is. For me, it all started when I was a little girl.
Look! Look! Octopus!
Look, look, there!
Wow.
Dad, that's an octopus eye and ear.
You're right, it is. Should we try and find one?
Yeah! Dad, come here! Look over there! Dad, this is the best day ever!
I'm what's called a CODA. My parents were both born deaf. I was not. When people in the hearing world learn that about me, they always want to know more.
You start out your forehead and then go out with your hand.
I've always had one foot in the deaf world and one in the hearing world. I translated a lot for my parents. It made us closer. Now that it's been over a year since we've seen each other in person, communication is more important than ever. Especially with this guy.
Who is that, Owen? Who is that? That's you!
It's their first time being grandparents, so they don't want to miss a single moment, and I don't either. We can't wait for you to meet him.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Alphabet's 2021 Annual Stockholders' Meeting. I'm John Hennessy, Chair of the Board of Directors of Alphabet, and I'll be presiding over this meeting. Joining us at the meeting today are many members of Alphabet's Board of Directors. We also have members of the management team participating, including Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer, Kent Walker, Head of Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, and Fiona Cicconi, Head of People Operations and Chief People Officer. Today, I'll open with a few words, and then I'll turn it over to Sundar, who will talk about how we're building a more helpful Google and some of the long-term investments we are making in technology. After that, we'll hear from Kate Brandt, our Sustainability Officer, about how we're working to create a carbon-free future for all.
Then Kathryn Hall, our Vice President of Corporate Legal and Assistant Corporate Secretary, will go through the formal business of the meeting. Finally, we'll have a Q&A session where we will answer some of the stockholder questions that have been submitted online. You can see all the rules and procedures for this meeting posted on the virtual annual meeting platform. I have the privilege of serving as Chairman of the Board and have been a member of the Board for the last 17 years. This past year has been unlike any other in recent memory, as the world has grappled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges, Alphabet has responded in a way we can be proud of. Our products and services have helped people and businesses, and we've provided significant funding to support the global response, ranging from distance learning to economic relief and recovery.
Our thoughts today are with all of those who are experiencing the devastating impact of COVID-19 right now. As cases are rising in different parts of the world, we'll continue to look for ways to help. Looking inward, our Board works closely with management to ensure appropriate oversight in many areas, including upholding our workplace values, improving our governance structure, and driving greater accountability for the environmental, social, and governance goals that have long been an important part of our work. We take these responsibilities very seriously, and we've made a number of adjustments over the past year. To ensure a fair workplace, this year the Board implemented a series of industry-leading enhancements that incorporated input from both employees and stockholders. One example is the new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Council, which comprises internal senior executives and external DEI experts.
We've recently amended the charter of our Audit Committee, now the Audit and Compliance Committee. This committee now has more oversight on matters related to strategy and financial reporting, competition, civil and human rights, and sustainability, in addition to its existing oversight responsibilities around data privacy and security. Finally, we are committed to a governance structure that promotes long-term stockholder value creation and accountability. This past year, the Board implemented a majority voting standard for the elections of directors. This rule will be in effect as we vote today. Looking ahead, we will further focus on driving shared accountability among our leadership team for behaviors and outcomes that create lasting, meaningful change.
In 2022, we intend to introduce a bonus program for members of Google's senior executive team that will be determined in part by performance in supporting the environmental, social, and governance goals that have long been a key part of Alphabet and Google's work. We take the trust that you put in us as a Board very seriously. We look forward to working with you now and in the future to continue building the best possible company. With that, I'll turn it over to Sundar.
Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Hard to believe it's been a year since our first virtual shareholders' meeting. In some parts of the world, thanks to vaccines, places are starting to reopen. Yet other places are going through some of the most difficult moments of the pandemic yet. For anyone in areas where COVID is surging, we hope you're taking care. It's been a difficult year. At Google, it's given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with the goal of building a more helpful Google for everyone. That means giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health, and happiness. During the pandemic, we focused on being helpful in moments big and small.
Across our products and platforms, we provided accurate information related to COVID-19, which has been viewed hundreds of billions of times. We worked to get emergency relief to communities in need. We helped businesses reach their customers and helped 150 million students and teachers continue learning with Google Classroom. We also saw the pandemic accelerate some digital trends. Our investments in big bets such as Cloud and YouTube positioned us well to help people in moments that matter. For example, many people turned to YouTube to learn a new skill. And we saw a rise in popularity of short-form video content. YouTube Shorts launched in India and the U.S. with 6.5 billion daily views as of March. We also saw a huge uptick in the use of Google Meet, our video conferencing tool. At the beginning of the pandemic, we made Meet free for everyone.
Since then, it's helped millions stay connected around the world. More broadly, Google Cloud is helping organizations of all sizes navigate the future of work. The collaboration tools we've been building for more than 15 years have taken on even greater importance as more people work virtually. Now, our new Smart Canvas experience in Google Workspace will enable even richer collaboration across Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Reimagining the future of work is one of the biggest ways we can be helpful. Across our products, we also want to help in small ways that can add up to big changes over time. One example of this is Google Maps. Last year, we added 150,000 km of bike lanes. And now we are adding a feature to help keep you safe on the road.
Maps can now proactively identify conditions where you may need to brake suddenly because of weather or traffic and suggest a safer route. We believe this AI-powered improvement can help reduce up to 100 million sudden stops every year. Maps is one example of how AI is making products more helpful. Our advances in translation, image, and language understanding are making it possible to talk to someone in another language using Assistant's interpreter mode, view cherished memories on photos, or use Google Lens to solve a tricky math problem. We're also using AI to improve the search experience for billions of people. BERT was a huge leap forward in a computer's ability to process natural language. Yet there are still times where computers don't understand us. That's because language is endlessly complex. We use it to tell stories, crack jokes, and share ideas.
The richness and flexibility of language make it one of humanity's greatest tools and one of computer science's greatest challenges. Our latest research breakthrough is helping to bridge that gap. LaMDA, short for Language Models for Dialogue Applications, is open domain, which means it's designed to converse on any topic, from how to make a sandwich to the planet Pluto. This is still early research. As we go, we are ensuring LaMDA is consistent with our AI Principles and meets our incredibly high standards on fairness, accuracy, safety, and factual accuracy. LaMDA is a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it's still only trained on text. MUM is a multimodal model, which means it understands information across text and images and eventually across video and audio too. That means it can surface deeper insights and help with complex tasks.
For example, with MUM, you could one day plan a road trip by asking Google to find a route with beautiful mountain views. We look forward to bringing these capabilities to our products in the near future. MUM and LaMDA are examples of how we are applying deep computer science to solve problems in search. As we look further into the future, there are types of problems that classical computing will not be able to solve in reasonable time. That's why we are also investing in quantum computing. Achieving our quantum milestone in 2019 was a tremendous accomplishment, but we are still at the beginning of a multi-year journey. Success here could have significant real-world applications, such as increasing battery efficiency, creating more sustainable energy, and improving drug discovery. We recently opened a new AI quantum campus to help us make progress.
Beyond Google, we continue to make ambitious bets on new technologies across Alphabet. Last year, Waymo reached a major milestone with the launch of its fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona. Limited rider testing began early this year with employee volunteers in San Francisco to gather feedback and to make improvements. Last fall, DeepMind's AlphaFold made a big breakthrough in solving the protein folding problem, accelerating progress in biological research. I've talked about some of the ways we are pushing the boundaries of computer science. The moonshot for us is to make sure all of this is done sustainably. Sustainability has been a core value for us for more than 20 years. We were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007, and last year, we eliminated our entire carbon legacy.
In 2017, we became the first major company to match our operations with 100% renewable energy, which we have done for four years running. Our next ambition is our biggest yet: to create a carbon-free future for all. Last year, we announced our aim to operate on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030. That means every Google data center and office campus will run on clean electricity every hour of every day. This represents a significant step change from current approaches and requires us to solve some hard computer science problems. Sustainability is one of the defining challenges of our time, and technology will play a big role in helping us meet it. Our Sustainability Officer, Kate Brandt, will share more about how we'll do that in a moment, but first, let me conclude by saying thank you to everyone at Alphabet who makes this work possible.
Over the past year, we have seen people use technology in profound ways to keep themselves healthy and safe, to learn and grow, to connect, and to help one another through really difficult times. It's been inspiring to see and has made us even more committed to being helpful in the moments that matter. Thank you to all of our employees and shareholders. Now, let me turn it over to Kate Brandt. Before joining Google, Kate served as the first U.S. federal Chief Sustainability Officer. She now leads sustainability across our worldwide operations, products, and supply chains, helping to drive change inside Google and beyond. Kate, over to you.
Thank you, Sundar. We are working towards creating a carbon-free future for all in three ways. First, we are demonstrating leadership in our own operations and pushing the boundaries on what is possible. Second, we're using our technology to enable our partners to reach their own climate action goals. And then third, we are building sustainability right into our core products to empower more than one billion people to easily make sustainable choices. As Sundar mentioned, we are starting at Google with our aim to operate on carbon-free energy 24/7. This means sourcing carbon-free energy in every place we operate. We're working to solve for the unique challenges of each region by deploying technology, advocating for policy change, and developing new approaches to transacting for carbon-free energy. Today, five of our data centers are already operating at or near 90% carbon-free.
And one of those is our newest data center, which opened in Denmark last December. To bring it online, we built five new solar farms. A distinct challenge of 24/7 carbon-free energy is just that. It has to run every hour of every day, even when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. One way we're doing this is through the world's first carbon-intelligent computing platform. It automatically shifts the timing of many compute tasks to when clean power sources are most plentiful. And by this time next year, we'll be shifting more than a third of non-production compute within our data center networks to both places and times with greater availability of carbon-free energy. We're also looking beyond well-known technologies like wind and solar, in particular to those that can provide on-demand clean energy, like geothermal.
By combining our cloud AI with novel drilling techniques and fiber optic sensing, we believe we can dramatically increase productivity and deliver clean geothermal power in a broad range of new places. So we have signed the first corporate agreement to develop a next-generation geothermal power plant. And it will connect to the grid serving our Nevada data centers beginning early next year. Eliminating emissions from our own operations is vital. But our impact is far greater when we enable others to do the same. Today, thanks to our sustainability investments, Google Cloud is the cleanest cloud in the industry for any business anywhere in the world. By moving an application into Google Cloud, the net operational emissions from running that application will be zero. We are also pushing change forward by partnering with nonprofits, research organizations, and governments to build technology that accelerates meaningful progress.
One example is our work with cities. Half of the Earth's population lives in cities, and 70% of emissions originate in cities. So we are committed to helping over 500 cities to reduce one gigaton of carbon emissions annually by 2030. And we're doing this through the Environmental Insights Explorer, which enables cities to understand their emissions and solar potential more clearly. And we're making this data available to 3,000 cities and already seeing huge uptake of the data in places like Houston and Hartford, who are using EIE to set bold climate targets. This is just one of the ways we're organizing new sources of data about our planet and making them useful. But our true aspiration is to enable everyone to be a part of the solution to climate change. And we're starting with maps.
In particular, we are working in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Lab, or NREL. And we've created a new routing model that optimizes for lower fuel consumption, taking into account factors like distance, traffic flow, and road incline. Soon, Google Maps in the U.S. will default to the route with the lowest carbon footprint if it has roughly the same ETA as the fastest route. And this is just one example of how we're building products and technology that empower people to better understand their personal impact and reduce their carbon footprint. We are committed to offering a billion people the tools and information to make more sustainable choices by 2022. At Google, we strive to build sustainability into everything that we do. And we are proud of what we've achieved in our first two decades.
As we embark on our next decade of climate action, we're eager to help move the world closer to a carbon-free future for all. Thank you.
Thank you, Kate. 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 Mike Renzulli, 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'll provide for a question-and-answer period after we have finished the formal business of the meeting. If you would like to ask a question during the meeting, please enter your question in the Ask a Question box on the virtual meeting website. To allow us to answer questions from as many stockholders as possible, please keep questions succinct and limited to one topic per question.
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 6, 2021, 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. Eleven directors will be elected at today's meeting. The directors elected today will hold office until the 2022 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, L. John Doerr, Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Ann Mather, Alan R. Mulally, 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 2021 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 2021 fiscal year. The next matter being submitted to our stockholders is approval of Alphabet's 2021 stock plan. Our Board of Directors has recommended that our stockholders approve Alphabet's 2021 stock plan as described in detail in our proxy statement. The next eight items being submitted are stockholder proposals that were included in our proxy statement. The first stockholder proposal is brought by the NorthStar Asset Management Funded Pension Plan. The proponent has submitted a prerecorded presentation in support of the proposal. I recognize Tenzing Tashishar for a period of three minutes.
My name is Tenzing Chadotsang from NorthStar Asset Management in Boston, representing 8,182 shares of Alphabet Class A stock. I am presenting Resolution Number 4, a request that Alphabet's Board take all practicable steps to initiate and adopt a recapitalization plan for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share. When shareholders of common stock do not have an equal right to weigh in on significant matters of corporate policy, we lose our right to oversee management through board elections, empowering the CEO and insiders to appoint a board that only serves the CEO and management, not shareholders. When Alphabet went public, shareholders already lacked the opportunity to give substantive input into company policies. Alphabet's voting structures heavily weighed to favor insiders, given that Class B shares are granted 10 times the voting rights of Class A shares.
Shareholder rights were further weakened when Class B insiders voted in the creation of a brand new class of stock with zero voting rights. The fact that this new share structure was approved is particularly remarkable because our calculations estimate that 85% of Class A outside shares that voted disapproved of establishing the Class C non-voting stock. This measure passed because insiders supported it, insiders who control over 50% of the voting power while owning far less in economic stake. While shareholders might accept this lack of input when profits are up, this voting structure constitutes a considerable risk to governance and shareholder value during times of crisis, and our company is no stranger to controversy.
The founders brought this company to fruition and led it into profitability, but the company's decision to offer common shares of the company on public exchanges, making Alphabet a public company, brings with it a responsibility to shareholders to practice good governance. Shareholders, we urge you to vote for proxy item number four. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. Since its inception, Google, and now Alphabet, has been managed with a focus on the long term. We believe that our success is owed in large part to the leadership and vision originated by our co-founders, Larry and Sergey, and carried on today by Sundar. Through their collective focus on innovation and long-term growth, we've established a track record of building a strong company and creating stockholder value. Investors purchasing our stock are aware of our capital structure. We've had a multi-class capital structure since we became a public company in 2004. We believe this capital structure insulates us from short-term pressures and provides stability over the long term. We also have a sound and effective governance structure to ensure accountability to our stockholders.
Our chair, along with the other independent members of our Board of Directors, who together currently comprise more than 70% of our board, provide oversight of and valuable guidance to the management team. We believe that our capital structure, combined with our robust governance structure, has provided significant stability to the company and is therefore in the best interest of our stockholders. As such, our Board of Directors has recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Arjuna Capital on behalf of Steven M. Schewe, Richard Shorter, and Eleanor Shorter. 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, and I move proposal number five on behalf of Arjuna Capital asking Alphabet's Board to nominate a board candidate with a high level of human and civil rights expertise. The reason for this request should be obvious. Google and YouTube have become lightning rods for disseminating racism, sexism, hate, violence, and misinformation, content that threatens human and civil rights, an informed electorate, and our democracy. And solving this problem is not so simple. If it were, Alphabet's track record would not be so poor, oversight would not be failing, and we would not be presenting our concerns for the fourth straight year. Rightly, our company is scrambling to build some internal scaffolding, adding experts, policies, and now charging the audit and compliance committee with responsibility for civil and human rights oversight.
Yet that same committee does not appear to have any expertise or experience in civil or human rights. Therefore, it is unclear to shareholders how members of the committee are properly equipped to carry out the work in their charter. To date, Alphabet has been addressing the symptoms, not the sickness, which is a business model fueled by clickbait and user profiling. The New York Times reports that YouTube has been successfully weaponized by racists to undermine Black Lives Matter. In 2020, researchers found that YouTube radicalized people by encouraging them to watch videos espousing white supremacy and anti-Muslim propaganda. And the Global Disinformation Index found that Google placed ads on 84% of COVID conspiracy theory stories and 49 websites proliferating virus disinformation. And now, a $3 billion U.K. lawsuit alleges YouTube has systematically broken privacy laws by harvesting children's data.
The ties between the company's business model and threats to civil and human rights can no longer be ignored, and while this model has been profitable, it is increasingly problematic, threatening Alphabet's brand and social license to operate. Alphabet is losing the trust of its advertisers, users, and perhaps most importantly, public policymakers. Not only has Alphabet been called before Congress on multiple occasions, the company is now at the center of an antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission. Despite this, we have yet to see a proactive approach to address the problem, which is a surveillance-based business model incompatible with the right to privacy that is threatening human and civil rights. To solve this problem, it's going to take Alphabet's actual board stepping up to the plate and addressing the root cause.
To do that, it needs actual human and civil rights expertise, which is what we're asking for today. Thank you for your time and close consideration.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. In their first letter to shareholders, Larry and Sergey highlighted Google's goal to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. This vision continues to guide all of our work at Google. We believe in technology's power and the potential to have a profoundly positive impact across the world. We care deeply about protecting users online, and we're committed to significantly improving the lives of as many people as possible with our products and services. Throughout our company, we are guided by internationally recognized human rights standards.
We are steadfast in our commitment to respecting the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementing treaties, as well as upholding the standards established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, or the UNGPs, and in the Global Network Initiative Principles, or the GNI Principles. Our work on civil rights and human rights is conducted through our Human Rights Program, a central function consisting of experts in the field supporting our efforts to ensure that we are meeting our commitment to the UNGPs, GNI Principles, and other civil and human rights instruments. Our Human Rights Program develops and advances company-wide strategy on civil and human rights, advises product teams on potential civil and human rights impacts, conducts human rights due diligence, and engages external experts and stakeholders.
These external engagements help us identify, prioritize, and address existing and potential civil and human rights impacts. They also present important opportunities for Google to get feedback on how and where we should consider improvements to our policies, practices, and services. Within our organization, we have dedicated personnel who are focused on product jurisdiction and functional areas and are responsible for the day-to-day operations of protecting users and meeting Google's human rights obligations. Senior management oversees the implementation of the human rights commitments and provides regular updates on relevant issues to the members of our audit and compliance committee. In fact, we recently amended the audit and compliance committee's charters to explicitly include risk oversight of civil and human rights issues. The audit and compliance committee also provides pertinent updates to the full Board of Directors to ensure that it is apprised of these matters.
We believe the members of our Board of Directors are able to provide risk oversight of civil and human rights issues. There are a myriad of skills that make an ideal board candidate, and our current process allows us to consider all factors holistically. As a result, our Board of Directors does not believe it would be in the best interest of the company or our stockholders to adopt this proposal and has recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Zevin Asset Management, LLC, as a lead filer on behalf of the Sisters of the Order of St. Dominic of Grand Rapids, along with a number of other co-filers. I recognize Marcella Pinilla for a period of three minutes to present the proposal. I'll advise you when your time is about to expire. Operator, please open Marcella's line.
Marcella, your line is now open.
Thank you. Greetings, members of the Alphabet Board, Alphabet Management, and fellow shareholders. My name is Marcella Pinilla, and I am Director of Sustainable Investing at Zevin Asset Management. Our clients care about embedded risks related to environmental, social, and governance factors in their investments. I'm here today to address an important governance issue at Alphabet and to formally move item number six on the proxy ballot. Our shareholder proposal requests that Alphabet assess how it will integrate environmental and social considerations, and in particular, gender, racial, and ethnic diversity and related financial impacts into performance measures or vesting conditions that may apply to senior executives. We commend the company's robust disclosure regarding its current diversity and inclusion efforts and its recent announcement in the proxy of its intention to introduce a bonus program tied to ESG goals in 2022.
However, we believe the company has fallen short of articulating a clear and accountable plan to shareholders. The announcement is too vague for shareholders to understand, and this poses risks for Alphabet if not well communicated and implemented. At this point, according to the company's 2020 diversity report, underrepresented people of color account for only 7.9% of its tech workforce and only 6.8% of leadership. While Alphabet has announced goals to increase the presence of underrepresented groups at senior levels and to more than double the number of underrepresented groups at all other levels by 2025, investors do not have a clear picture of how this strategy is driven by executive accountability. There are concerns regarding executive pay practices in general at Alphabet, according to ISS analysis, that reinforce our request.
While the majority of equity incentives for CEOs at S&P 500 companies carry performance vesting criteria, we do not see Alphabet's executive compensation tied to the achievement of preset performance goals. We believe transparent performance metrics are a core tenet of effective governance and accountability. Alphabet has not stepped up to the detriment of its executive compensation plan in general. Alphabet has the opportunity to be a leader in going beyond stating intentions to integrate ESG goals into its bonus structure by describing a concrete and ambitious plan on how the company will solve its diversity crisis and hold executives accountable for it.
In closing, investors are looking for more detail on Alphabet's announced ESG-linked bonus structure, including a description of the specific goals and modifier metrics that will fall under the ESG bonus plan for VPs and above, the weight of such issues within the larger bonus structure, and an overall compensation, along with the details and timeline of how the plan will be implemented and governed. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. We've already talked a bit today about our approach to sustainability. Alphabet has long supported corporate sustainability, including environmental, social, and diversity considerations. We strive to build sustainability into everything we do, from designing and operating efficient data centers, advancing carbon-free energy, creating sustainable workplaces, building better devices and services, empowering users with technology, and enabling a responsible supply chain. In April, we announced that we intend to introduce an ESG environmental, social, and governance bonus program for members of our senior executive team beginning in 2022 that will take into account our efforts to further ESG goals. We will be sharing further details about this new ESG bonus program in the coming months.
As Sundar mentioned earlier, Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, and in 2020, for the fourth year in a row, we matched 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases. We are the largest annual corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world based on renewable electricity purchased in megawatt hours. In 2020, we neutralized our entire legacy carbon footprint since our founding, making Google the first major company to achieve carbon neutrality for its entire operating history. We are also committed to scaling diversity, equity, and inclusion, increasing transparency of data on workforce representation, and taking a more systematic approach to improve outcomes in workforce representation and to create an inclusive culture. Over the last year, we have seen progress in a number of areas. Since 2018, we increased representation for women globally and for Black+ and Latinx+ employees in the U.S.
In 2020, we announced our racial equity commitments focused on building sustainable equity for our Black community and making our products and programs helpful for everyone. Given our commitment to incorporating sustainability values into our business and our practices, including compensation practices, our Board of Directors does not believe that implementing this proposal would provide additional benefit to our stockholders and has, therefore, recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by Azzad Asset Management as a lead filer along with other co-filers. The proponents have submitted a pre-recorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Isedua Oribhabor for a period of three minutes.
Good morning. My name is Isedua Oribhabor, and I'm the business and human rights lead at Access Now, an international organization dedicated to promoting the digital rights of users at risk around the world. I'm here today representing the coalition concerned about the impact of government censorship on human rights. On behalf of Azzad Asset Management and other co-filers, I hereby move proposal number 7, which asks Alphabet to assess the feasibility of publicly disclosing a list of censored or blocked terms and sites in a transparency report. Google has led on transparency in the tech sector. Since Google released a transparency report in 2010, the first of its kind, companies across the world, from U.S. telecoms to Russia-based platforms, have followed suit, providing valuable information that has helped journalists and civil society expose and fight government abuse and overreach.
Access Now launched our transparency reporting index in 2014 to compile these reports and highlight trends, and Google has been featured on the index from the start. However, Google is now at risk of losing its lead. To maintain its status as a trailblazer on transparency, Google should improve how it reports on censorship. While raw data and statistics are helpful, they do not tell the full story of where and why censorship occurs. For example, Google's transparency report for Nigeria shows that in the first half of 2019, after years without receiving a single request from the government, Google received and complied with a request to de-list URLs. February 2019 was also an election year for Nigeria, one fraught with protests and violence. Much has changed since Google's first report a decade ago.
Governments seeking control over individuals increasingly turn to technology as a means of suppressing dissent or criticism. It is imperative that Alphabet does its part to keep governments in check and ensure that its users can fully exercise their human rights. Transparency is not just about telling the public that censorship has occurred. It is about showing us what governments are censoring, which enables us to determine why. Our freedom of expression is constantly under attack with an erosion of the civic space worldwide, and we need specific data to hold authorities to account effectively. On behalf of Azzad Asset Management and other concerned Alphabet investors, I urge you to vote for proposal number seven. This is your chance to fight for free expression on behalf of at-risk users. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. We believe that knowledge is empowering and that a society with better information is better off than one with less. Providing access to helpful information to people around the world is central to our mission. Transparency is core to our commitment to respect human rights. In 2010, we were the first internet company to launch a tool to inform people about government requests for user data or content removal. Today, the Google Transparency Report Hub includes transparency reports on requests for user information, government requests to remove content, traffic, and disruptions, and many other topics that can potentially impact human rights.
In this report, we voluntarily disclose the number of requests we received from courts and government agencies in six-month periods, organized by reason given for the removal request, type of product, and whether the requesting government body was a member of the judicial or executive branch. We also provide this information on a country and regional basis. Additionally, we provide transparency about removals via Lumen, a project of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Lumen works with a variety of international research partners to offer information about the global landscape of internet takedown requests. We also continue to innovate around product-specific transparency with YouTube's industry-leading transparency reporting on how it enforces our Community Guidelines. We are committed to tackling the challenge of quickly removing content that violates our Community Guidelines and reporting on our progress.
In 2018, we launched a quarterly YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement Report and over the years expanded the report to include additional data like channel removals, the number of comments removed, the policy reason why a video or channel was removed, and most recently, appeals data. Given the significant work that we have done in this area, our public reporting of these issues, and our commitment to continue to keep the public informed about our efforts, our Board of Directors does not believe that implementing this proposal would provide additional benefit to our stockholders and has, therefore, recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by co-filers Trillium Asset Management LLC on behalf of Trillium ESG Global Equity Fund, and Mirova on behalf of the Mirova Global Sustainable Equity Fund. The proponents have submitted a pre-recorded presentation in support of this proposal.
I recognize Andrew Gainer-Dewar for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is Andrew Gainer-Dewar, and I am here on behalf of the Trillium Global Equity Fund and Mirova Global Sustainable Equity Fund to hereby move item 8, seeking a third-party review of the effectiveness of the company's whistleblower policies. The following comments are mine. I'm a software engineer at Google, where since 2016, I've worked on display ads, a vital but enormously sensitive business where we must respect user privacy, support the businesses of our advertiser and publisher customers, and comply with a complex web of interlocking regulations. In the nearly five years I've worked in this area, I've been continuously impressed by the depth of my coworkers' commitment to do the right thing and hold each other accountable to these high standards.
I trust that my colleagues would speak up if their projects threatened our users, our customers, or our compliance, and I rely on that trust every day as I do my job. In 2019, some of my coworkers in Google's cloud organization learned of a contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Troubled by this relationship, they gathered more information and evidence from internal public documents and ran a petition campaign within Google, collecting over 1,000 signatures from Googlers like me who felt that this work violated our values and breached our trust. One of the folks who worked on this campaign was Sophie Waldman, an engineer from my own office in Cambridge and a valued member of our tight-knit community. On November 25th of 2019, Sophie was fired. Sophie had done everything the right way, but that didn't matter.
Executives gave press statements falsely implying Sophie had leaked confidential documents, which they privately admitted she was not accused of. They also issued menacingly vague memos on new data security policies, threatening to fire workers for even reading or sending coworkers links to unlabeled documents if they were later deemed to be need-to-know, although searching and reading internally public documents is a common practice, which is essential to many Googlers' jobs. I understood quite clearly that this was a crackdown, retaliation against Sophie for speaking up, and a warning to the rest of us to stay in line. Colleagues I spoke with at the time got the same impression. Needless to say, this was chilling. My trust that my coworkers would speak up was shattered, and with it, my confidence that my own work was serving the public interest.
Alphabet's Code of Conduct tells us, "If you see something that you think isn't right, speak up." But how can we expect people to do so, given what's happened to those who've spoken up in the past and the chilling effect of the data security policy? The workers of Alphabet, including members of our Alphabet Workers Union, have seen again and again how those who raise ethical concerns internally and in good faith have their concerns dismissed, their projects sidelined or blocked, and their careers damaged by smear campaigns or public firings. Whistleblowers like Sophie are the conscience of our company, and without robust protections against retaliation, the next worker who sees something wrong won't be able to safely speak up.
A third-party review of the effectiveness of Alphabet's whistleblower policies is an essential step to ensure that these protections are put in place, and I urge the shareholders to vote in favor of item 8. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. Supporting a culture of healthy and open discussion has always been a part of our DNA. We have an unwavering commitment to uphold a culture that encourages employees and others to speak up and report concerns related to violations of our code of conduct, policies, or laws, including our human rights commitments. That's why it is so important to us to promote and enforce policies that strictly prohibit retaliation of any kind in the workplace. We also place immense trust in our employees to treat company confidential information with care. People around the world rely on us every day for helpful, reliable information, and it's critical that we uphold the integrity of our mission to build helpful products and services for everyone.
As part of that mission, we expect each and every one of our employees to abide by our long-standing data privacy policies to protect confidential company, customer, and user data. We stand by the actions taken in response to serious violations of our policies. To be clear, we do not dismiss employees for raising concerns. We provide multiple channels for employees to report concerns, and they can do so anonymously. We thoroughly investigate all allegations of retaliation, and we make sure that no complaint raised goes unheard. For the past six years, we have annually shared an industry-leading internal investigations report with our employees, which provides transparency into the number and type of concerns employees have raised and how the company has resolved those concerns, which is industry-leading.
In 2020, we introduced updated workplace policies and practices, including continuing to enhance investigations processes, such as how we escalate concerns, how quickly we respond, how we reopen cases, and more. Offering follow-up meetings to complainants involved in harassment, discrimination, or retaliation investigations following an investigation. A framework of disciplinary actions for substantiated claims. Continuing to analyze investigations data to ensure that lessons learned are captured and used to further improve our policies, training, and investigation outcomes. Reporting to our Board of Directors on effectiveness of the company's sexual harassment and retaliation compliance programs and proposed changes. We believe our existing policies, which are broad in scope and ensure compliance with the law, adequately address the concerns raised by the proponent. As such, our Board of Directors has recommended a vote against this proposal.
The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The proponents have submitted a pre-recorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Justin Danhoff for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
I'm Justin Danhoff of the National Center for Public Policy Research, and I move proposal number nine, which seeks to protect Alphabet from potential reputational risks within the company's charitable giving programs. Last year, corporate America spent record sums donating to so-called racial justice organizations. Alphabet was among those supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. While everyone believes that Black Lives Matter, some of the actual organizations involved in that effort have questionable motives and operations.
For example, the organization Black Lives Matter was founded by Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, who have described themselves as, quote, "trained Marxists." According to the Capital Research Center, Black Lives Matter is, quote, "the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded socialist communist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades." As further explained in the National Review, it, quote, "harbors shelters and empowers true radicals, people who not only have no problem seeing our cities burns, they're also fanning the flames." And when some of the group's extreme policy positions were revealed, it quickly scrubbed large portions of its platform from its website. For instance, Black Lives Matter supports the disruption of, quote, "the Western prescribed nuclear family." Do Alphabet and its affiliates support the disruption of the nuclear family? Black Lives Matter is also calling for defunding the police.
Cities that have tried this insanity, including Portland, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, have all seen a surge in violent crime rates. Does the company think we should defund the police? If the company is working to improve conditions in Black communities, we applaud that. Given the opaque nature of the company's spending in this arena, however, is why our proposal is so important. Shareholders have a right to know if the company is funding real reform or radical elements that seek to upend civil society. To that end, the company should report on all groups receiving donations, the intent of the grants, how those donations are monitored, and what safeguards are in place to ensure that the funds are used for those intended purposes. Please join me in voting yes on proposal nine. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. Google.org is our philanthropy, and its mission is to bring the best of Google to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges, combining funding, innovation, and technical expertise to support underserved communities and expand access to opportunity. We also connect innovative nonprofits and social enterprises with Google's resources to accelerate their impact because we know that the best answers often come from those closest to the problem. We join forces with nonprofit innovators and commit Google volunteers, technology, and over $200 million in grants every year to help scale their impact with a focus on four key areas of giving: economic opportunity, tech and innovation, crisis response, and inclusion. Our core charitable initiatives are publicly available at www.google.org. Significant charitable contributions are made only after an extensive internal review and must be approved by one or more members of our executive team.
Google.org identifies and supports organizations around the world. For example, earlier this year, Google.org launched the global $25 million Impact Challenge for Women and Girls to support nonprofits and social impact organizations around the world that are working to advance the economic empowerment of women and girls and create pathways to prosperity. In 2020, Google.org announced $100 million to support the global COVID-19 response, focusing on health and science, distance learning, and economic relief and recovery. Also in 2020, Google.org pledged $12 million to support organizations working to advance racial justice. We frequently update our stockholders and the public about these charitable contributions activities. As such, our Board of Directors does not believe that implementing this proposal would benefit our stockholders and has recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is being brought by the CTW Investment Group.
The proponent has submitted a pre-recorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Richard Clayton for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
I'm Richard Clayton, the research director for the CTW Investment Group, and I am moving proposal number 10, the stockholder proposal regarding report on risks related to anti-competitive practices. Resolved that shareholders of Alphabet Incorporated ask the Board of Directors to report to shareholders on how it oversees risks related to anti-competitive practices, including whether the full board or board committee has oversight responsibility, whether and how consideration of such risks is incorporated into board deliberations regarding strategy, and the board's role in Alphabet's public policy activities related to such risks. The report should be prepared at reasonable expense and should omit confidential or proprietary information. The anti-competitive practices of big tech companies, including Alphabet's subsidiary Google, are receiving increasing scrutiny from the public, regulators, and enforcers.
Criticism of Google has focused on its use of monopoly power over internet search and its access to user data to eliminate competitors not only in search but also in adjacent areas such as online shopping. A September 2020 survey found that 58% of Americans are not, quote, "confident they are getting objective and unbiased search results when using an online platform to shop or search," unquote. 85% are very or somewhat concerned about the amount of data online platforms store about them. The House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee began investigating competition in digital markets in 2019, focusing on Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The subcommittee reviewed over a million documents and held seven hearings, including one at which Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai testified. The subcommittee's staff report was scathing.
It found that companies' control over key distribution channels allows them to eliminate competition and, quote, "pick winners and losers throughout our economy," unquote, inhibiting innovation and reducing consumer choices. The report found that Google leveraged its search monopoly to, quote, "boost Google's own inferior vertical offerings," unquote, and concluded that, quote, "Google increasingly functions as an ecosystem of interlocking monopolies," unquote. Backlash against anti-competitive practices can increase pressure for new regulation. 60% of Americans favor more regulation of online platforms. The European Union is considering adopting new regulations and/or a new competition tool to deal with structural competition problems not effectively addressed through current rules. The antitrust subcommittee report recommended a slew of changes aimed at ending the monopolies enjoyed by Google and other platforms.
Given the widespread debate and rapidly changing environment, we believe that robust board oversight would improve Alphabet's management of risks related to anti-competitive practices and that shareholders would benefit from more information about the board's role.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. We have clear oversight responsibilities and robust structures in place to evaluate and manage competition-related risks on an ongoing basis that we publicly disclose. As set forth in our Audit and Compliance Committee charter, which is publicly available on Alphabet's investor relations website, the Audit and Compliance Committee is specifically charged with overseeing risks and exposures associated with competition and regulatory compliance. In undertaking this risk assessment, the members of the Audit and Compliance Committee, aided by members of management, meet regularly and deliberate the impact of evolving competition laws on the company's strategies. The Audit and Compliance Committee and the Chief Legal Officer also provide regular reports to our Board of Directors to ensure that it is apprised of these matters. Our Board of Directors provides critical oversight of the regulatory challenges facing the company and its mitigation strategies.
In an effort to keep our stakeholders apprised of the ongoing risks, we provide disclosure in our public filings with the SEC regarding the increased regulatory scrutiny and related risks we face in competition law matters and otherwise. We also post periodic commentary on Google's public policy blog. The requested report could be a detriment to both the company's and our stockholders' interests due to the privileged and/or confidential nature of the information that would be required in the report. The proposal, if implemented, may interfere with management's and our Board of Directors' ability to adequately and fully respond to and defend against ongoing investigations and legal proceedings concerning antitrust and various competition matters. We do not believe that an additional report as detailed in the proposal would enhance our stockholders' understanding of how we oversee competition risks.
As such, our Board of Directors does not believe that implementing this proposal would benefit our stockholders and has recommended a vote against this proposal. The next stockholder proposal is our final item of business. As a reminder, the polls are currently open and will close after the presentation of this final item, which is a stockholder proposal being brought by John Cheveden on behalf of James McRitchie and Myra K. Young. The proponents have submitted a pre-recorded presentation in support of this proposal. I recognize Frederick Alexander for a period of three minutes to present this proposal.
My name is Frederick Alexander. I'm the CEO of The Shareholder Commons and here today on behalf of Jim McRitchie and Myra Young to present proposal 11. The purpose of the proposal is to allow the company to reject shareholder primacy by becoming a PBC or public benefit corporation, a form that allows Alphabet to promote the interests of all its stakeholders. In the proxy statement, the company says that it already does so. But here's the rub. It does so only to the extent that it profits shareholders, as the company says it in its own proxy statement, and I quote, "The link between corporate conduct and stockholder value is ever increasing. Thus, consideration of the effect of corporate actions on various stakeholders, which is permitted by Delaware law, in some cases could be an important factor," end quote.
So in other words, they focus on the instances where stakeholder consideration helps shareholders. The company considers the interests of the billions of people who use its platforms only to the extent that doing so increases financial returns. The plain truth is that Alphabet's business model is to sell advertising, and that can mean driving traffic with content and algorithms that degrade social institutions. For example, Alphabet points to an effort to amplify the voices of Black artists. Sounds inclusive, right? Yet Google Podcasts distributes, and I quote, "More than two dozen podcasts from white supremacists and pro-Nazi groups offering a buffet of slurs and conspiracy theories," end quote, that other podcast platforms still refuse to carry. And so the company promotes inclusivity to burnish its reputation but still peddles hate to make money.
On a similar note, Alphabet pledged $150 million earlier this year to promote vaccine education and access. Yet even today, it continues to deliver vaccine disinformation because doing so increases its profits. To quote another commentator, "Further, they have failed to remove the accounts of prominent anti-vaxxers who have repeatedly violated their terms of service." So what we see here is that Alphabet's reputation polishing good deeds do not make up for the damage to society that they do. This proposal is not meant to appeal to altruism. Alphabet's conduct hurts its own shareholders because they have diversified portfolios with investments in many companies. These portfolios suffer when the economy bears the weight of the systemic threats that Alphabet creates. Alphabet is a critical gatekeeper in the information economy.
It is in the interests of all stakeholders, including its diversified shareholders, that it use this role in a manner that authentically supports the health of critical social and environmental systems. Conversion to a PBC would change the rules that govern the company, allowing it, together with its shareholders, to reject shareholder primacy that threatens us all. Thank you.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. The company is committed to building products that improve the lives of people everywhere while ensuring that everything we do is ethical, fair, and responsible. We strive to serve the best interest of not just our stockholders but our other stakeholders, including our users, workforce, and communities we operate in. We recognize the way we address broader social challenges may impact a number of aspects of our business, including our financial performance, relationships with our current and potential users and investors, and ability to attract and retain the world's best talent. As such, we believe conducting business in a socially responsible and sustainable manner is part and parcel of making business decisions that seek to enhance our ability to succeed over the long term.
Our current structure in no way hinders our ability to undertake a wide range of impactful short-term and long-term projects and initiatives that could be considered public benefits as defined in Delaware law. We tackle some of humanity's biggest challenges in a number of important areas. For example, in 2019, we announced our $1 billion housing commitment to help increase the Bay Area's housing supply and support organizations on the front lines of homelessness. In 2020, Alphabet issued $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds, the largest sustainability or green bond issuance by any company in history, to fund projects in various different areas, including energy efficiency, clean energy, green buildings, clean transportation, affordable housing, commitment to racial equity, support for small businesses, and COVID-19 response relief. In June 2020, YouTube announced a multi-year $100 million fund to amplify and develop the voices of Black creators and artists and their stories.
In January 2021, Alphabet pledged an additional $150 million to promote COVID-19 vaccine education and equitable access. In March 2021, Google announced that it plans to invest over $7 billion to expand Google offices and data centers and create at least 10,000 new jobs across the U.S. It also released an economic impact report showing that Google helped provide $426 billion of economic activity for more than two million businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators, and developers in 2020. Our Board of Directors believes in continuing to lead with transparency, accountability, and integrity to serve our stockholders and stakeholders. Our existing corporate structure allows us to do all this and much more without being limited to a specified public benefit. As such, our Board of Directors has recommended a vote against this proposal.
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've 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, excuse me, 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 2021 fiscal year and the approval of Alphabet's 2021 stock plan. 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 Common Stock and Class B Common Stock entitled to vote and present at the meeting or represented by proxy voted against proposals 4 through 11 described in our proxy statement. Therefore, each of these stockholder proposals has not 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've now set aside time for a question-and-answer session. We'd like to thank you for all the questions you've submitted. We received several questions about Alphabet's position on the stockholder proposals covered during the formal business of today's meeting.
Since I have already stated the company's position on each stockholder proposal, we will not be covering those again during the question-and-answer session. We also received a number of questions from several stockholders on the same topic or that were otherwise related. We have grouped and summarized those so that they could be answered together. With that, I'd like to invite back John Hennessy, Chair of the Board, and Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google and Alphabet. I'd also like to invite Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google, Kent Walker, Head of Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, and Fiona Cicconi, Head of People Operations and Chief People Officer. We'll now begin the Q&A session. We received several questions about our sustainability efforts. In particular, our stockholders want to know how we are contributing to an environmentally sustainable future.
Thanks, Sundar, I can answer this, and hopefully the detail Kate provided earlier was helpful. I'm heartened to see the interest and energy around sustainability. It's been a foundational value for us for a long time. We became carbon neutral in 2007, and now in our third decade of climate action, we're going even further to help build a carbon-free future for everyone. We are the first major company to make a commitment to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy in all of our data centers and campuses worldwide. This is far more challenging than the traditional approach of matching energy usage with renewable energy. It means not emitting carbon in the first place. So we are working to get this done by 2030 and already making good progress. Today, five of our data centers are already operating at or near 90% carbon-free energy.
We are investing in new technologies and techniques such as carbon-intelligent load shifting across both time and place within our data center network and efforts to make geothermal energy viable in more places. And our newest campus in Mountain View is being built to the highest sustainability standards, including a first-of-its-kind Dragonscale solar skin that's equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and has the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts. Sustainability is for sure, I think, one of the most defining challenges of our time, and we are committed to using advances in computer science and AI to meet it. Each year, we publish an environmental report which summarizes all our progress there. And you can find our 2020 report and more information about our work on sustainability online at sustainability.google.com.
Thanks, Sundar. We received a number of questions about how we are thinking about capital returns. In particular, we've been asked whether we will be issuing dividends to stockholders.
This is Ruth, and I can answer this question. So I've shared my framework for capital allocation on a number of earnings calls, and it remains unchanged. The primary use of capital is to invest to support long-term growth. We remain very focused on investing against the many opportunities that we see in key areas such as search, AI, cloud, and YouTube. And second, we look for opportunities to further accelerate growth through acquisitions and strategic investments. We're pleased to have closed our acquisition of Fitbit in the first quarter. And as hopefully you saw at our developers conference recently, I/O, we're already seeing benefits for our wearables strategy. So we do regularly evaluate our cash and capital structure, including the size, the pace, the form of capital return to stockholders.
We continue to believe that a share repurchase program is the best answer for us because it provides flexibility, which we believe is very valuable given we operate in such a dynamic and competitive area.
Thanks, Ruth.
Thanks, Ruth. We also received a number of questions asking whether the company would consider a stock split.
So this is Ruth again. I can take this one as well. We do not have any current plans to do a stock split. Historically, many companies that split their stock did so in order to make their shares more attractive to retail investors. But it is now possible for investors to purchase fractional shares of companies. So no further updates right now regarding a stock split.
Thanks, Ruth. We also received several questions on what we are doing to ensure political neutrality in our products and operations.
This is Kent. I can take this question. We design our products carefully in order to give people access to a wide range of information, viewpoints, ideas, and that's in line with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, so as just one example, every year we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure that they surface relevant and useful content in response to people's queries. Diversity is built into the design of our products, and we don't bias in favor of any one political persuasion. Our platforms have actually empowered people and organizations from across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach different audiences, so we build our products and we enforce our policies in a fair and objective way without regard to political ideology.
Notably, several independent studies by leading researchers and journalists have found no evidence of political bias in our products. That's consistent with our goal I mentioned at the outset of creating the best possible products for our users, from search to Android to YouTube, making relevant and helpful information readily accessible around the world.
Thanks, Kent. AI ethics is the next topic. A stockholder asks, "Your work in AI promises to have major impact, whether for good or ill. What is your approach to ensure responsible AI?
This is Kent again. I can answer this question as well. In 2018, we published our AI principles. These principles, these guidelines, and our internal teams that work on responsible innovation and AI ethics and ML fairness all help us make sure that our services prioritize safety, fairness, privacy, and accountability. They also specify areas where we will not design or deploy AI, such as to support mass surveillance or to violate human rights. Facial recognition, to take one example, is a very sensitive technology, and that's why for many years we've taken a cautious approach and have not offered it as a general-purpose application programming interface, what's called an API.
Or another example, when creating technologies like LaMDA, our language model for dialogue applications, which is a state-of-the-art dialogue system for extended conversations, we're using our AI principles to help us think through the values and the risks of the technology so we get it right. As an example, when interactions become more natural, we want users to be aware that they're interacting with a technological tool, not with another person. We're, of course, deeply familiar with the issues involved with machine learning models like unfair bias. And we've been researching and developing these technologies for many years. That's why we built and open-sourced resources like our Responsible AI Toolkit to help analyze models and the data that they're trained on, and our People + AI Guidebook, which helps people build human-centered AI applications.
In the course of this work, we are engaged with a wide range of subject matter experts, people like social scientists and ethicists, human rights specialists who help us develop these technologies in accordance with our AI principles. And we'll be devoting even more resources going forward. We're expanding our responsible innovation and AI ethics teams, and we look forward to increasing our investment in this work.
Thanks, Kent. The next question is, "What is Alphabet doing to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace?
Thanks, Kathryn, and hello. This is Fiona. I can take this question. Let me just start with what's at stake here. If we're going to truly build helpful products for everyone, we need a diverse workforce that's representative of the users we serve. Each year, we want to see that we've hired more underrepresented talent and that we're supporting everyone so that people from all backgrounds can have a successful career with us. This is why we have company-wide goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion so that every part of our company is tackling this and that we're taking a systemic approach. We invest in the Googlers of tomorrow through programs like Code Next and our Computer Science Summer Institute to build our talent pipeline. We emphasize diversity in our recruiting efforts, for example, through our partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities.
We support our employees throughout their time at Google. For example, we're piloting a six-month onboarding program for Black Googlers. And in the past year, we've doubled the size of our retention and progression team. We also run a rigorous pay equity analysis to make sure salaries, bonuses, and equity awards are fair. If we find any differences in proposed pay, including between men and women, we make upward adjustments to remove them before new compensation goes into effect. We also undertake rigorous analyses to ensure fairness in role leveling and performance ratings. And we're building a culture where everyone can feel that they belong here, with dedicated programming and a new suite of anti-racism education for all employees globally. So we're making progress. 2020 was our largest year ever for hiring Black and Latinx Googlers in the U.S., both overall and actually in tech roles.
And for the second year in a row, we increase representation for women globally, including in leadership roles. To better support underrepresented Googlers so they can stay, thrive, and truly feel they belong at Google, we're doubling down on our retention efforts. By 2022, we'll have tripled our investment in this program. This work is top of mind for our entire leadership team. I'm proud of the work underway that's allowing us to make progress and focus on ways we can address our diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities with rigor and the utmost dedication.
Thanks, Fiona. Next, a few of our stockholders asked us to elaborate on the enforcement of YouTube's community guidelines.
This is Kent again. I can answer this question. Starting in 2018, we introduced our community guidelines enforcement framework to increase the transparency and accountability around our efforts to protect viewers. In Q4 of 2020 alone, we removed over nine million videos for violating our community guidelines. Over 90% of those were first flagged by our automated system. We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and we terminate channels that repeatedly or egregiously violate those policies. We regularly report on the removal of hateful content. Again, going back to Q4 of 2020, we removed over 175,000 videos and roughly 180 million comments for violating our policies on hate and harassment. We've also added a new metric to our transparency reports called Violative View Rate, which will help us estimate what percentage of views on YouTube are coming from content that violates our policies.
Again, in Q4 of last year, that violative view rate on YouTube was between 16 and 18 views out of every 10,000. That's down over 70% compared to the same quarter in 2017, in large part thanks to our investments in machine learning. People continue to find all types of informational content on YouTube, from educational videos to podcasts. YouTube's leadership is continuing its focus on removing violative content, raising up authoritative content, reducing the spread of borderline content, and rewarding trusted creators.
Thanks, Kent. We received the following question on our overall business strategy. Alphabet has a number of bets it is making with its subsidiaries, and these bets to date had losses. But the unrealized potential value within these entities seem enormous. Will Alphabet look at spinning these off or keep them within the holding company?
This is Sundar. I can answer this question. The Alphabet structure has been very helpful. It's allowed us to scale and manage many different areas. And how we approach each of these areas can sometimes be very different because they're unique businesses with different time horizons. We take a long-term view and are excited about the potential for technological breakthroughs. A lot of the areas build on our deep expertise in computer science and AI, and we'll continue to manage a portfolio with discipline. For example, with Waymo and Verily, we've brought in outside investment to help us create value in a disciplined way. Some of our biggest bets are within Google itself. In areas like cloud, we see a substantial opportunity accelerated by secular digital transformation trends, including a shift to cloud computing over the past year.
We are encouraged by the momentum in growth revenue, customer wins, and I think we have key differentiators that will enable us to continue to gain traction with customers.
Thanks, Sundar. Next, we received a few questions asking about how we're ensuring the privacy of our users and their data.
Safeguarding privacy and keeping users safe and secure online is at the heart of everything we do. All of our products are guided by three important principles. First, with one of the world's most advanced security infrastructure, our products are secure by default. We keep more users safe by blocking malware, phishing, spam messages, and potential cyber attacks than anyone else in the world. Second, we use responsible data practices so that every product we build is private by design. AI and computer science help us do that, and our focus on data minimization pushes us to do more with less data. We continue to progress advanced privacy-preserving technologies like federated learning and industry initiatives like the open-source Privacy Sandbox. Third, we create easy-to-use privacy and security settings so you are in control.
Two years ago, we announced Auto-Delete, which encourages users to have their activity data automatically and continuously deleted. We've made a default for all new Google accounts. And now, after 18 months, we automatically delete your activity data with the option for you to tell us to do it sooner. It's now active for over two billion accounts.
Thanks, Sundar. We have time for one last question. A few of our stockholders wanted to know more about how we are thinking about the equitable composition of the board.
Sean, thank you for your question, and I'll be happy to answer it. As we mentioned earlier, we have an ongoing commitment to scaling diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workforce, and the same applies in our boardroom. We've taken a thoughtful approach to board composition to ensure that our directors have a wide range of backgrounds, skills, experiences, and perspectives. Our board is composed of highly experienced, diverse leaders in their respective fields. We have entrepreneurs, technologists, operational and financial experts, academics, scientists, investors, advisors, and nonprofit board members, to name a few. Of our 11 directors, 8 are independent, including myself as chair, and all of our board committee members. Six of our 11 directors represent gender and/or ethnic diversity, and two of our three independent board committees are chaired by women.
We've also worked hard to strike the right balance between long-term understanding of our business and adding fresh perspectives on our board. Indeed, we've added four new directors the past six years. Given the global and complex nature of our business, our board believes it is important to consider diversity of race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, education, cultural background, and personal experiences in evaluating board candidates. When identifying nominees for directors, our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee will consider and will ask any search firm that it engages, provide a set of candidates that include both underrepresented people of color and different genders. Over the last four years, for open positions on Alphabet's board, we have followed this guideline and have interviewed a diverse set of qualified candidates.
As we look ahead, we'll continue to look for ways to further enhance corporate governance and commit to creating an effective board that represents the best interests of our stockholders and provides practical insights and diverse viewpoints. This now concludes our question and answer period. Thank you for all the questions you submitted. We appreciate you taking the time to join us today and for your continued support of Alphabet. Please take care, and we'll see you all next year.