Is Google ethical?
Our research highlights multiple ethical issues with Google, including services to the Israeli defense ministry, increasing carbon emissions, and accusations that it is avoiding tax in poorer countries.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and the Google overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
People
In April 2024, TIME reported that "Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and the tech giant has negotiated deepening its partnership during Israel’s war in Gaza”. Earlier that month, the magazine found that Google and Amazon shared a $1.2 billion contract with Israel, and had fired an employee who protested against the agreement in light of Israel’s siege of Palestine.
Google told TIME that its work for the Israeli government was largely for civilian purposes. “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education. Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” It declined to comment further after being questioned about the Ministry of Defense contract.
Google also performs poorly when it comes to workers’ rights in Ethical Consumer’s workers rating.
While it has a supplier code of conduct, outlining minimum expectations for workers such as no use of forced or child labour, the policy does not require payment of a living wage or have adequate limitations on working hours.
The company has received criticisms for rights violations. In 2021, the Guardian reported that Google had “been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem”. Google admitted the failures and said it would conduct an investigation after being contacted by the Guardian.
In April 2024, the trade union for workers employed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, also criticised a decision by the company to roll back rights for subcontracted and temporary workers. The union stated that they would “no longer be entitled to a $15 an hour minimum wage, health insurance or other fundamental benefits.”
Environment and climate
Google scores very badly in Ethical Consumer’s climate rating.
The company discussed measures it had taken to cut emissions, such as increasing its renewable energy use and data centre efficiency, encouraging suppliers to reduce emissions, and using more recycled content for consumer devices.
However, it has repeatedly been criticised for climate harms. In July 2024, the Guardian reported: “Google’s goal of reducing its climate footprint is in jeopardy as it relies on more and more energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence products. The tech giant revealed [on] Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 48% over the past five years.”
The tech company told the Guardian that its “extremely ambitious” goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 “won’t be easy”. It said “significant uncertainty” around reaching the target included “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict”.
In May 2023, Climate Action Against Disinformation, a coalition of civil society groups, published a report called ‘YouTube’s Climate Denial Dollars’. The report stated: “Google has failed to systematically enforce its policy to demonetize YouTube videos that contain climate disinformation.” It also criticised the company for having a weak definition of climate misinformation, that “exempts popular and prevalent misleading content that’s garnered millions of views.”
Politics and finances
Google also has much room for improvement when it comes to its own internal financial ethics.
The highest paid director of the company, Sundar Pichai, received $8,802,824 (about £6.9m) in 2023, which Ethical Consumer considers to be excessive.
Meanwhile Google scores very badly in Ethical Consumer’s tax conduct rating. The company has multiple subsidiaries in tax havens such as Ireland and Singapore.
In October 2020, the BBC published an article titled: “Facebook, Google and Microsoft 'avoiding $3bn in tax in poorer nations'”. The article shared findings from international charity ActionAid, stating: “ActionAid estimates that $2.8bn could pay for 729,010 nurses, 770,649 midwives or 879,899 primary school teachers annually in 20 countries across Africa, Asia and South America.” Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.
Subscribe to see the full detailed stories about Google.
The text above was written in March 2025, and most research was conducted in December 2024.