Alphabet
On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate named Alphabet Inc. Google became Alphabet's largest subsidiary and the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructuring, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Page, who became CEO of Alphabet.
Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual harassment, Dragonfly, a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven, a military drone artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for the company. On October 25, 2018, The New York Times published the exposé, "How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the 'Father of Android'". The company subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years" for sexual misconduct. On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment complaints. CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in support of the protests. Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of retaliating against internal activists.
On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia. In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia. Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia.
On June 3, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust violations. This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on the grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search advertising markets. In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google's new commerce chief. Ready's role will not be directly involved with Google Pay.
In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting measures. These measures included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel. Most employees were also working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led to Google announcing that they would be permanently converting some of their jobs to work from home.
The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube, and a third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages were resolved within hours. In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees. In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia.
In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran a years-long program called "Project Bernanke" that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing for ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December. In September 2021, the Australian government announced plans to curb Google's capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has a monopoly on the market harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers.
In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up company Raxium. Raxium is set to join Google's Devices and Services team to aid in the development of micro-optics, monolithic integration, and system integration. In December 2022, Google debuted OSV-Scanner, a Go tool for finding security holes in open source software, which pulls from the largest open source vulnerability database of its kind to defend against supply chain attacks. Following the success of ChatGPT and concerns that Google was falling behind in the AI race, Google's senior management issued a "code red" and a "directive that all of its most important products—those with more than a billion users—must incorporate generative AI within months". In March 2023, in direct response to the rapid rise of ChatGPT, Google released Bard (now Gemini), a generative AI chatbot.
In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers in Ohio. These centers, which will be built in Columbus and Lancaster, will power up the company's tools, including AI technology. The two new locations, together with the existing data center near Columbus, will bring Google's total investment in Ohio to more than $2 billion. In August 2024, Google lost the 2020 antitrust case United States v. Google LLC in federal court, as it was found that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search. D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit Mehta held that this monopoly was in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. In September 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU), based in Luxembourg, also found that Google held an illegal monopoly, in this case regarding its shopping search, and could not avoid paying a €2.4 billion fine. The EU Court of Justice found that Google's treatment of rival shopping searches, which the court referred to as "discriminatory", was in violation of the Digital Markets Act. In October 2024, Google was fined by a local Russian court a symbolic 2.5 decillion dollars for allegedly blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda. No payment was made.
In November 2024, Google announced the establishment of a new AI hub in Saudi Arabia, aiming to support the Kingdom's economic growth and technological development as part of its Vision 2030 initiative. This AI hub is projected to contribute up to $71 billion to Saudi Arabia's economy by advancing AI-driven solutions tailored to the region's specific needs and training local talent. The partnership between Google and Saudi Arabia includes collaboration with key stakeholders, such as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to develop AI applications that will benefit sectors like healthcare, finance, oil and gas, and logistics. The initiative focuses on creating localized AI technologies, with an emphasis on integrating Arabic language capabilities and enabling widespread cloud adoption.
In March 2025, Google agreed to acquire Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity startup focusing on cloud computing, for US$32 billion. This cash deal would be Google's biggest ever, as well as it currently being the most expensive deal of 2025. Alphabet reportedly tried to close a deal for only $23 billion in 2024, but this fell apart after concerns about regulatory hurdles, among other issues. Wiz, a company located in the U.S. and Israel, was cofounded in 2020 by Assaf Rappaport. The company is backed by a number of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, as well as notably being partnered with Amazon and Microsoft, as listed in their website. Google reportedly said "the deal would help artificial-intelligence companies get better security and use more than one cloud service."
In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that Google had received a $200 million contract for AI in the military, along with Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI. In September 2025, federal judge Amit Mehta in the United States ruled that Google will not be required to divest Chrome or the Android operating system; however, the ruling barred Google from having exclusive contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and Gemini app products, and ruled Google must share search data with competitors.
In March 2026, Google signed an energy pledge at the White House which required them to bear the cost of new electricity generation to power their data centers.
