ITEM 1A.RISK FACTORS
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described below, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results, and affect the trading price of our Class A and Class C stock.
Risks Specific to our Company
We generate a significant portion of our revenues from advertising, and reduced spending by advertisers, a loss of partners, or new and existing technologies that block ads online and/or affect our ability to customize ads could harm our business.
We generated more than 80% of total revenues from the display of ads online in 2021. Many of our advertisers, companies that distribute our products and services, digital publishers, and content providers can terminate their contracts with us at any time. These partners may not continue to do business with us if we do not create more value (such as increased numbers of users or customers, new sales leads, increased brand awareness, or more effective monetization) than their available alternatives. Changes to our advertising policies and data privacy practices, as well as changes to other companies’ advertising and/or data privacy practices have in the past, and may in the future, affect the advertising that we are able to provide, which could harm our business. In addition, technologies have been developed that make customized ads more difficult or that block the display of ads altogether and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the availability and functionality of third-party digital advertising. Failing to provide superior value or deliver advertisements effectively and competitively could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
In addition, expenditures by advertisers tend to be cyclical, reflecting overall economic conditions and budgeting and buying patterns. Adverse macroeconomic conditions have affected, and may in the future affect, the demand for advertising, resulting in fluctuations in the amounts our advertisers spend on advertising, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.
We face intense competition. If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, customers, and other partners, we may not remain competitive, which could harm our business and operating results.
Our business environment is rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Our businesses face changing technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of rival products and services. To compete successfully, we must accurately anticipate technology developments and deliver innovative, relevant and useful products, services, and technologies in a timely manner. As our businesses evolve, the competitive pressure to innovate will encompass a wider range of products and services. We must continue to invest significant resources in R&D, including through acquisitions, in order to enhance our technology and new and existing products and services.
We have many competitors in different industries. Our current and potential domestic and international competitors range from large and established companies to emerging start-ups. Some competitors have longer operating histories and well established relationships in various sectors. They can use their experience and resources in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by making acquisitions, continuing to invest heavily in R&D and in talent, aggressively initiating intellectual property claims (whether or not meritorious), and continuing to compete aggressively for users, advertisers, customers, and content providers. Further, discrepancies in enforcement of existing laws may enable our lesser known competitors to aggressively interpret those laws without commensurate scrutiny, thereby affording them competitive advantages. Our competitors may also be able to innovate and provide products and services faster than we can or may foresee the need for products and services before us.
Our operating results may also suffer if our products and services are not responsive to the needs of our users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. As technologies continue to develop, our competitors may be able to offer experiences that are, or that are seen to be, substantially similar to or better than ours. This may force us to compete in different ways and expend significant resources in order to remain competitive. If our competitors are more successful than we are in providing compelling products and services or in attracting and retaining users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers, our operating results could be harmed.
Our ongoing investment in new businesses, products, services, and technologies is inherently risky, and could divert management attention and harm our financial condition and operating results.
We have invested and expect to continue to invest in new businesses, products, services, and technologies. The investments that we are making across Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets reflect our ongoing efforts to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. Our investments in Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets span a wide range of industries beyond online advertising. Such investments ultimately may not be commercially viable or may not result in an adequate return of capital and, in pursuing new strategies, we may incur unanticipated liabilities. These endeavors may involve significant risks and uncertainties, including diversion of resources and management attention from current operations and, with respect to Other Bets, the use of alternative investment, governance, or compensation structures that may fail to adequately align incentives across the company or otherwise accomplish their objectives.
Within Google Services, we continue to invest heavily in hardware, including our smartphones, home devices, and wearables, which is a highly competitive market with frequent introduction of new products and services, rapid adoption of technological advancements by competitors, short product life cycles, evolving industry standards, continual improvement in product price and performance characteristics, and price and feature sensitivity on the part of consumers and businesses. There can be no assurance we will be able to provide hardware that competes effectively.
Within Google Cloud, we devote significant resources to develop and deploy our enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. We are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services and hire talent, particularly to support and scale our salesforce. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services. Pricing and delivery models are competitive and evolving, and we may not attain sufficient scale and profitability to achieve our business objectives.
Within Other Bets, we are investing significantly in the areas of health, life sciences, and transportation, among others. These investment areas face intense competition from large, experienced, and well-funded competitors and our offerings may not be able to compete effectively or to operate at sufficient levels of profitability.
In addition, new and evolving products and services, including those that use AI and machine learning, raise ethical, technological, legal, regulatory, and other challenges, which may negatively affect our brands and demand for our products and services. Because all of these new ventures are inherently risky, no assurance can be given that such strategies and offerings will be successful and will not harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Our revenue growth rate could decline over time, and we anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
Our revenue growth rate could decline over time as a result of a number of factors, including increasing competition. Changes in device mix, geographic mix, ongoing product and policy changes, product mix, and property mix and an increasing competition for advertising may also affect our advertising revenue growth rate. We may also experience a decline in our revenue growth rate as our revenues increase to higher levels, if there is a decrease in the rate of adoption of our products, services, and technologies, or due to deceleration or decline in demand for devices used to access our services, among other factors.
In addition, we may also experience downward pressure on our operating margin resulting from a variety of factors, such as the continued expansion of our business into new fields, including products and services such as hardware, Google Cloud, and subscription products, as well as significant investments in Other Bets, all of which may have margins lower than those we generate from advertising. We may also experience downward pressure on our operating margins from increasing regulations, increasing competition, and increased costs for many aspects of our business. Due to these factors and the evolving nature of our business, our historical revenue growth rate and historical operating margin may not be indicative of our future performance. For additional information, see Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and any inability to protect them could reduce the value of our products, services, and brands as well as affect our ability to compete.
Our patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights are important assets for us. Various events outside of our control pose a threat to our intellectual property rights, as well as to our products, services, and technologies. For example, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are distributed or made available through the Internet. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be sufficient or effective. Although we seek to obtain patent protection for our innovations, it is possible we may not be able to protect some of these innovations. Moreover, we may not have adequate patent or copyright protection for certain innovations that later turn out to be important. There is always the possibility that the scope of the protection gained will be insufficient or that an issued patent may be deemed invalid or unenforceable.
We also seek to maintain certain intellectual property as trade secrets. The secrecy of such trade secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised, which could cause us to lose the competitive advantage resulting from these trade secrets. We also face risks associated with our trademarks. For example, there is a risk that the word “Google” could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word “search.” Some courts have ruled that "Google" is a protectable trademark, but it is possible that other courts, particularly those outside of the U.S., may reach a different determination. If this happens, we could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word “Google” to refer to their own products, thus diminishing our brand.
Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business and our ability to compete. Also, protecting our intellectual property rights is costly and time consuming. Any increase in the unauthorized use of our intellectual property could make it more expensive to do business and harm our operating results.
Our business depends on strong brands, and failing to maintain and enhance our brands would hurt our ability to expand our base of users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners.
Our strong brands have significantly contributed to the success of our business. Maintaining and enhancing the brands within Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets increases our ability to enter new categories and launch new and innovative products and services that better serve the needs of our users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners. Our brands have been, and may in the future be, negatively affected by a number of factors, including, among others, reputational issues, third-party content shared on our platforms, data privacy and security issues and developments, and product or technical performance failures. For example, if we fail to respond appropriately to the sharing of misinformation or objectionable content on our services and/or products or objectionable practices by advertisers, or otherwise to adequately address user concerns, our users may lose confidence in our brands.
Furthermore, failure to maintain and enhance equity in our brands may harm our business, financial condition, and operating results. Our success will depend largely on our ability to remain a technology leader and continue to provide high-quality, trustworthy, innovative products and services that are truly useful and play a valuable role in a range of settings.
We face a number of manufacturing and supply chain risks that could harm our financial condition, operating results, and prospects.
We face a number of risks related to manufacturing and supply chain management, which could affect our ability to supply both our products and our internet-based services.
We rely on other companies to manufacture many of our finished products; to design certain of our components and parts; to participate in the distribution of our products and services; and to design, manufacture, or assemble certain components and parts in our technical infrastructure. Our business could be negatively affected if we are not able to engage these companies with the necessary capabilities or capacity on reasonable terms, or if those we engage fail to meet their obligations (whether due to financial difficulties or other reasons), or make adverse changes in the pricing or other material terms of our arrangements with them.
We have experienced and/or may in the future experience supply shortages and/or price increases that could negatively affect our operations, driven by raw material, component or part availability, manufacturing capacity, labor shortages, industry allocations, logistics capacity, tariffs, trade disputes and barriers, natural disasters or pandemics, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutoffs associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), and significant changes in the financial or business condition of our suppliers. In addition, some of the components we use in our technical infrastructure and products are available from only one or limited sources, and we may not be able to find replacement vendors on favorable terms in the event of a supply chain disruption. In addition, a significant supply interruption that affects us or our vendors could delay critical data center upgrades or expansions and delay product availability.
We may enter into long-term contracts for materials and products that commit us to significant terms and conditions. We may be liable for materials and products that are not consumed due to market acceptance, technological change, obsolescences, quality, product recalls, and warranty issues. For instance, because certain of our hardware supply contracts have volume-based pricing or minimum purchase requirements, if the volume of our hardware sales decreases or does not reach projected targets, we could face increased materials and manufacturing costs or other financial liabilities that could make our products more costly per unit to manufacture and negatively affect our financial results. Furthermore, certain of our competitors may negotiate more favorable contractual terms based on volume and other commitments that may provide them with competitive advantages and may affect our supply.
Our products and services have had, and in the future may have, quality issues resulting from design, manufacturing, or operations. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by components we purchase from other manufacturers or suppliers. If the quality of our products and services does not meet expectations or our products or services are defective, it could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
We require our suppliers and business partners to comply with laws and, where applicable, our company policies, such as the Google Supplier Code of Conduct, regarding workplace and employment practices, data security, environmental compliance, and intellectual property licensing, but we do not control them or their practices. Violations of law or unethical business practices could result in supply chain disruptions, canceled orders, harm to key relationships, and damage to our reputation. Their failure to procure necessary license rights to intellectual property could affect our ability to sell our products or services and expose us to litigation or financial claims.
Interruption to, interference with, or failure of our complex information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results. In addition, problems with the design or implementation of our new global enterprise resource planning system could harm our business and operations.
The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer contracts depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Our systems are vulnerable to damage, interference, or interruption from modifications or upgrades, terrorist attacks, natural disasters or pandemics, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutoffs associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power loss, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, ransomware attacks, computer denial of service attacks, phishing schemes, or other attempts to harm or access our systems. Some of our data centers are located in areas with a high risk of major earthquakes or other natural disasters. Our data centers are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, and intentional acts of vandalism, and, in some cases, to potential disruptions resulting from problems experienced by facility operators. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of a natural disaster or pandemic, closure of a facility, or other unanticipated problems affecting our data centers could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. In addition, our products and services are highly technical and complex and have contained in the past, and may contain in the future, errors or vulnerabilities, which could result in interruptions in or failure of our services or systems.
In addition, we rely extensively on information systems and technology to manage our business and summarize operating results. We are in the process of a multi-year implementation of a new ERP system, which is designed to accurately maintain our financial records, enhance the flow of financial information, improve data management, and provide timely information to our management team. As the phased implementation continues, we may experience delays, increased costs, and other difficulties. Failure to successfully design and implement the ERP system as planned could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results. Additionally, if we do not effectively implement the ERP system as planned or the ERP system does not operate as intended, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting could be negatively affected.
Our international operations expose us to additional risks that could harm our business, our financial condition, and operating results.
Our international operations are significant to our revenues and net income, and we plan to continue to grow internationally. International revenues accounted for approximately 54% of our consolidated revenues in 2021. In addition to risks described elsewhere in this section, our international operations expose us to other risks, including the following:
•restrictions on foreign ownership and investments, and stringent foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned in countries outside the U.S.;
•import and export requirements, tariffs and other market access barriers that may prevent or impede us from offering products or providing services to a particular market, or that could limit our ability to source assemblies and finished products from a particular market, and may increase our operating costs;
•longer payment cycles in some countries, increased credit risk, and higher levels of payment fraud;
•an evolving foreign policy landscape that may adversely affect our revenues and could subject us to new regulatory costs and challenges (including the transfer of personal data between the EU and the United Kingdom and new customer requirements), in addition to other adverse effects that we are unable to effectively anticipate;
•anti-corruption laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and other local laws prohibiting certain payments to government officials, violations of which could result in civil and criminal penalties;
•uncertainty regarding liability for services and content, including uncertainty as a result of local laws and lack of legal precedent; and
•different employee/employer relationships, existence of works councils and labor unions, and other challenges caused by distance, language, and cultural differences, making it harder to do business in certain jurisdictions.
Because we conduct business in currencies other than U.S. dollars but report our financial results in U.S. dollars, we have faced, and will continue to face, exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. Although we hedge a portion of our international currency exposure, significant fluctuations in exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may adversely affect our revenues and earnings. Hedging programs are also inherently risky and could expose us to additional risks that could harm our financial condition and operating results.
Risks Related to our Industry
People access the Internet through a variety of platforms and devices that continue to evolve with the advancement of technology and user preferences. If manufacturers and users do not widely adopt versions of our products and services developed for these interfaces, our business could be harmed.
People access the Internet through a growing variety of devices such as desktop computers, mobile phones, smartphones, laptops and tablets, video game consoles, voice-activated speakers, wearables, automobiles, and television-streaming devices. Our products and services may be less popular on some interfaces. Each manufacturer or distributor may establish unique technical standards for its devices, and our products and services may not be available or may only be available with limited functionality for our users or our advertisers on these devices as a result. Some manufacturers may also elect not to include our products on their devices. In addition, search queries are increasingly being undertaken via voice-activated speakers, apps, social media or other platforms, which could harm our business. It is hard to predict the challenges we may encounter in adapting our products and services and developing competitive new products and services. We expect to continue to devote significant resources to creating and supporting products and services across multiple platforms and devices. Failing to attract and retain a substantial number of new device manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, developers, and users, or failing to develop products and technologies that work well on new devices and platforms, could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results and ability to capture future business opportunities.
Data privacy and security concerns relating to our technology and our practices could damage our reputation, cause us to incur significant liability, and deter current and potential users or customers from using our products and services. Software bugs or defects, security breaches, and attacks on our systems could result in the improper disclosure and use of user data and interference with our users’ and customers’ ability to use our products and services, harming our business operations and reputation.
Concerns about, including the adequacy of, our practices with regard to the collection, use, governance, disclosure, or security of personal information or other data-privacy-related matters, even if unfounded, could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our policies and practices may change over time as expectations and regulations regarding privacy and data change.
Our products and services involve the storage, handling, and transmission of proprietary and other sensitive information. Software bugs, theft, misuse, defects, vulnerabilities in our products and services, and security breaches expose us to a risk of loss or improper use and disclosure of such information, which could result in litigation and other potential liability, including regulatory fines and penalties, as well as reputational harm. Additionally, our products incorporate highly technical and complex technologies, and thus our technologies and software have contained, and are likely in the future to contain, undetected errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities. We have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, some errors in our software code only after we have released the code. Systems and control failures, security breaches, failure to comply with our privacy policies, and/or inadvertent disclosure of user data could result in government and legal exposure, seriously harm our reputation, brand, and business, and impair our ability to attract and retain users or customers. Such incidents have occurred in the past and may continue to occur due to the scale and nature of our products and services. While there is no guarantee that such incidents will not cause significant damage, we expect to continue to expend significant resources to maintain security protections that limit the effect of bugs, theft, misuse, and security vulnerabilities or breaches.
We experience cyber attacks and other attempts to gain unauthorized access to our systems on a regular basis. Cyber attacks continue to evolve in sophistication and volume, and inherently may be difficult to detect for long periods of time. We have seen, and will continue to see, industry-wide vulnerabilities, such as the Log4j vulnerability reported in December 2021, which could affect our or other parties’ systems. We expect to continue to experience such
incidents or vulnerabilities in the future. Our efforts to address undesirable activity on our platform may also increase the risk of retaliatory attack. We may experience future security issues, whether due to employee error or malfeasance or system errors or vulnerabilities in our or other parties’ systems. While we may not determine some of these issues to be material at the time they occur and may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries and enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, disable or degrade service provided by or otherwise sabotage systems change frequently and often are recognized only after being launched against a target, even taking all reasonable precautions, including those required by law, we have been unable in the past and may continue to be unable to anticipate or detect attacks or vulnerabilities or implement adequate preventative measures.
Further, if any partners with whom we share user or other customer information fail to implement adequate data-security practices or fail to comply with our terms and policies or otherwise suffer a network or other security breach, our users’ information may be improperly accessed, used, or disclosed. If an actual or perceived breach of our or our business partners’ or service providers’ security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures would be harmed, we could lose users and customers, our trade secrets or those of our business partners may be compromised, and we may be exposed to significant legal and financial risks, including legal claims (which may include class-action litigation) and regulatory action, fines, and penalties. Any of the foregoing consequences could have a material and adverse effect on our business, reputation, and results of operations.
While we have dedicated significant resources to privacy and security incident response capabilities, including dedicated worldwide incident response teams, our response process, particularly during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not be fast enough to prevent or limit harm, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident. As a result, we may suffer significant legal, reputational, or financial exposure, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
For additional information, see also our risk factor on privacy and data protection regulations under ‘Risks Related to Laws and Regulations’ below.
Our ongoing investments in safety, security, and content review will likely continue to identify abuse of our platforms and misuse of user data.
In addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate cyber attacks, we are making significant investments in safety, security, and review efforts to combat misuse of our services and unauthorized access to user data by third parties, including investigation and review of platform applications that could access the information of users of our services. As a result of these efforts, we have in the past discovered, and may in the future discover, incidents of unnecessary access to or misuse of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties. However, we may not have discovered, and may in the future not discover, all such incidents or activity, whether as a result of our data limitations, including our lack of visibility over our encrypted services, the scale of activity on our platform, or other factors, including factors outside of our control such as a natural disaster or pandemic, and we may learn of such incidents or activity via third parties. Such incidents and activities may include the use of user data or our systems in a manner inconsistent with our terms, contracts or policies, the existence of false or undesirable user accounts, election interference, improper ad purchases, activities that threaten people’s safety on- or off-line, or instances of spamming, scraping, or spreading disinformation. While we may not determine some of these incidents to be material at the time they occurred and we may remedy them quickly, there is no guarantee that these issues will not ultimately result in significant legal, financial, and reputational harm, including government inquiries and enforcement actions, litigation, and negative publicity.
We may also be unsuccessful in our efforts to enforce our policies or otherwise prevent or remediate any such incidents. Any of the foregoing developments may negatively affect user trust and engagement, harm our reputation and brands, require us to change our business practices in ways that harm our business operations and adversely affect our business and financial results. Any such developments may also subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries, which could result in monetary penalties and damages, divert management’s time and attention, and lead to enhanced regulatory oversight.
Problematic content on our platforms, including low-quality user-generated content, web spam, content farms, and other violations of our guidelines could affect the quality of our services, which could damage our reputation and deter our current and potential users from using our products and services.
We, like others in the industry, face violations of our content guidelines across our platforms, including sophisticated attempts by bad actors to manipulate our hosting and advertising systems to fraudulently generate revenues, or to otherwise generate traffic that does not represent genuine user interest or intent. While we invest significantly in efforts to promote high-quality and relevant results and to detect and prevent low-quality content and
invalid traffic, we have been unable and may continue to be unable to adequately detect and prevent all such abuses or promote uniformly high-quality content.
Many websites violate or attempt to violate our guidelines, including by seeking to inappropriately rank higher in search results than our search engine's assessment of their relevance and utility would rank them. Such efforts have affected, and may continue to affect, the quality of content on our platforms and lead them to display false, misleading, or undesirable content. Although English-language web spam in our search results has been reduced, and web spam in most other languages is limited, we expect web spammers will continue to seek inappropriate ways to improve their rankings. We continuously combat web spam in our search results, including through indexing technology that makes it harder for spam-like, less useful web content to rank highly. We also continue to invest in and deploy proprietary technology to detect and prevent web spam on our platforms. We also face other challenges from low-quality and irrelevant content websites, including content farms, which are websites that generate large quantities of low-quality content to help them improve their search rankings. We are continually launching algorithmic changes designed to detect and prevent abuse from low-quality websites. We also face other challenges on our platforms, including violations of our content guidelines involving incidents such as attempted election interference, activities that threaten the safety and/or well-being of our users on- or off-line, and the spreading of misinformation or disinformation.
If we fail to either detect and prevent an increase in problematic content or effectively promote high-quality content, it could hurt our reputation for delivering relevant information or reduce use of our platforms, harming our financial condition or operating results. It may also subject us to litigation and regulatory action, which could result in monetary penalties and damages and divert management’s time and attention.
Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users. Internet access providers may be able to restrict, block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.
Our products and services depend on the ability of our users to access the Internet, and certain of our products require significant bandwidth to work effectively. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant market power in the broadband and internet access marketplace, including incumbent telephone companies, cable companies, mobile communications companies, and government-owned service providers. Some of these providers have taken, or have stated that they may take measures that could degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of user access to certain of our products by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate our offerings, by charging increased fees to us or our users to provide our offerings, or by providing our competitors preferential access. Some jurisdictions have adopted regulations prohibiting certain forms of discrimination by internet access providers; however, substantial uncertainty exists in the U.S. and elsewhere regarding such protections. For example, in 2018 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules, which could permit internet access providers to restrict, block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services. In addition, in some jurisdictions, our products and services have been subject to government-initiated restrictions or blockages. These could harm existing key relationships, including with our users, customers, advertisers, and/or content providers, and impair our ability to attract new ones; damage our reputation; and increase costs, thereby negatively affecting our business.
Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies
We face increased regulatory scrutiny as well as changes in regulatory conditions, laws, and policies governing a wide range of topics that may negatively affect our business.
We and other companies in the technology industry face increased regulatory scrutiny, enforcement action, and other proceedings. For instance, the U.S. Department of Justice, joined by a number of state Attorneys General, filed an antitrust complaint against Google on October 20, 2020, alleging that Google violated U.S. antitrust laws relating to Search and Search advertising. Similarly, on December 16, 2020, a number of state Attorneys General filed an antitrust complaint against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that Google violated U.S. antitrust laws as well as state deceptive trade laws relating to its advertising technology. Various other regulatory agencies in the U.S. and around the world, including competition enforcers, consumer protection agencies, data protection authorities, grand juries, inter-agency consultative groups, and a range of other governmental bodies have and continue to review and in some cases challenge our products and services and their compliance with laws and regulations around the world. We continue to cooperate with these investigations and defend litigation where appropriate. Various laws, regulations, investigations, enforcement lawsuits, and regulatory actions have in the past, and may in the future, result in substantial fines and penalties, injunctive relief, ongoing auditing and monitoring obligations, changes to our products and services, alterations to our business models and operations, and collateral litigation, all of which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Changes in international and local social, political, economic, tax, and regulatory conditions or in laws and policies have in the past, and may in the future, increase our cost of doing business and limit our ability to pursue certain business models, offer products or services in certain jurisdictions, or cause us to change our business practices. We have in the past had to alter or stop offering certain products and services as a result of laws or regulations that made them unfeasible, and new laws or regulations could result in our having to terminate, alter, or withdraw products and services in the future. Additional costs of doing business, new limitations, or changes to our business model or practices could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
We are subject to regulations, laws, and policies that govern a wide range of topics, including those related to matters beyond our core products and services. For instance, new regulations, laws, policies, and international accords relating to environmental and social matters, including sustainability, climate change, human capital, and diversity, are being developed and formalized in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere, which may entail specific, target-driven frameworks and/or disclosure requirements. We have implemented robust environmental and social programs, adopted reporting frameworks and principles, and announced a number of goals and initiatives, including those related to environmental sustainability and diversity. The implementation of these goals and initiatives may require considerable investments, and our goals, with all of their contingencies, dependencies, and in certain cases, reliance on third-party verification and/or performance, are complex and ambitious, and we cannot guarantee that we will achieve them.
Additionally, there can be no assurance that our current programs, reporting frameworks, and principles will be in compliance with any new environmental and social laws and regulations that may be promulgated in the U.S. and elsewhere, and the costs of changing any of our current practices to comply with any new legal and regulatory requirements in the U.S. and elsewhere may be substantial. Furthermore, industry and market practices may further develop to become even more robust than what is required under any new laws and regulations, and we may have to expend significant efforts and resources to keep up with market trends and stay competitive among our peers.
A variety of new and existing laws and/or interpretations could harm our business.
We are subject to numerous U.S. and foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subject matters. New laws and regulations, or new interpretations or applications of existing laws and regulations in a manner inconsistent with our practices, have made, and may continue to make, our products and services less useful, limit our ability to pursue certain business models or offer certain products and services in certain jurisdictions, require us to incur substantial costs, expose us to civil or criminal liability, or cause us to change our business practices. These laws and regulations are evolving and involve matters central to our business, including, among others:
•Laws and regulations around the world focused on large technology platforms, including the Digital Markets Act in the European Union and proposed antitrust legislation on self-preferencing and mergers and acquisitions in the U.S., which may limit certain business practices, and in some cases, create the risk of significant penalties.
•Privacy laws, such as the GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, Virginia CDPA, and ColoPA (as defined and discussed further below).
•Data protection laws passed by many states within the U.S. and by certain countries regarding notification to data subjects and/or regulators when there is a security breach of personal data.
•Consumer protection laws, including EU’s New Deal for Consumers, which could result in monetary penalties and create a range of new compliance obligations.
•New laws further restricting the collection, processing and/or sharing of advertising-related data. Copyright or similar laws around the world, including the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (EUCD) and EU member state transpositions. These and similar laws that have been adopted or proposed introduce new licensing regimes that could affect our ability to operate. The EUCD and similar laws could also increase the liability of some content-sharing services with respect to content uploaded by their users. Some of these laws, as well as follow-on administrative or judicial actions, have also created or may create a new property right in news publications that limits the ability of some online services to link to, interact with, or present such content. They may also require individual or collective compensation negotiations with news agencies and publishers for the use of such content, which may result in payment obligations that significantly exceed the value that such content provides to Google and its users, potentially harming our services, commercial operations, and business results.
•Data localization laws, which generally mandate that certain types of data collected in a particular country be stored and/or processed within that country.
•Various U.S. and international laws that govern the distribution of certain materials to children and regulate the ability of online services to collect information from minors, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and the United Kingdom’s Age-Appropriate Design Code.
•Various laws with regard to content moderation and removal, and related disclosure obligations, such as the Network Enforcement Act in Germany and the European Union's pending Digital Services Act, which may affect our businesses and operations and may subject us to significant fines if such laws are interpreted and applied in a manner inconsistent with our practices or when we may not proactively discover such content due to the scale of third-party content and the limitations of existing technologies. Other countries, including Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have implemented or are considering similar legislation imposing penalties for failure to remove certain types of content.
•Various legislative, litigation, and regulatory activity regarding our Google Play billing policies and business model, which could result in monetary penalties, damages and/or prohibition.
•Various legislative and regulatory activity requiring disclosure of information about the operation of our services and algorithms, which may make it easier for websites to artificially promote low-quality, deceptive, or harmful content on services like Google Search and YouTube, potentially harming the quality of our services.
In addition, the applicability and scope of these laws, as interpreted by the courts, remain uncertain and could harm our business. For example:
•We rely on statutory safe harbors, as set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S. and the E-Commerce Directive in Europe, against liability for various linking, caching, and hosting activities. Any legislation or court rulings affecting these safe harbors may adversely affect us. There are legislative proposals in both the U.S. and EU that could reduce our safe harbor protection.
•Court decisions such as the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on May 13, 2014 on the ‘right to be forgotten,’ which allows individuals to demand that Google remove search results about them in certain instances, may limit the content we can show to our users and impose significant operational burdens.
The introduction of new businesses, products, services, and technologies, our activities in certain jurisdictions, or other actions we take have subjected us, and will likely continue to subject us, to additional laws and regulations. Our investment in a variety of new fields, such as healthcare and payment services, has expanded, and will continue to expand, the scope of regulations that apply to our business. The costs of compliance with these laws and regulations are high and are likely to increase in the future. Any failure on our part to comply with laws and regulations can result in negative publicity and diversion of management time and effort and may subject us to significant liabilities and other penalties.
We are subject to claims, suits, government investigations, other proceedings, and consent decrees that may harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We are subject to claims, suits, government investigations, other proceedings, and consent decrees involving competition, intellectual property, data privacy and security, consumer protection, tax, labor and employment, commercial disputes, content generated by our users, goods and services offered by advertisers or publishers using our platforms, and other matters. Due to our manufacturing and sale of an expanded suite of products and services, including hardware as well as Google Cloud offerings, we also are subject to a variety of claims including product warranty, product liability, and consumer protection claims related to product defects, among other litigation. We may also be subject to claims involving health and safety, hazardous materials usage, other environmental effects, or service disruptions or failures.
Any of these types of legal proceedings can have an adverse effect on us because of legal costs, diversion of management resources, negative publicity and other factors. Determining reserves for our pending litigation is a complex, fact-intensive process that requires significant judgment. The resolution of one or more such proceedings has resulted in, and may in the future result in, additional substantial fines, penalties, injunctions, and other sanctions that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We may be subject to legal liability associated with providing online services or content.
Our products and services let users exchange information, advertise products and services, conduct business, and engage in various online activities. We also place advertisements displayed on other companies’ websites, and we offer third-party products, services, and/or content. The law relating to the liability of online service providers for others’ activities on their services is still somewhat unsettled around the world. Claims have been brought against us, and we
expect will continue to be brought against us, for defamation, negligence, breaches of contract, copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, unlawful activity, torts, fraud, or other legal theories based on the nature and content of information available on or via our services.
We may be subject to claims by virtue of our involvement in hosting, transmitting, marketing, branding, or providing access to content created by third parties. Defense of such actions could be costly and involve significant time and attention of our management and other resources, may result in monetary liabilities or penalties, and may require us to change our business in an adverse manner.
Privacy and data protection regulations are complex and rapidly evolving areas. Any failure or alleged failure to comply with these laws could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Authorities around the world have adopted and are considering a number of legislative and regulatory proposals concerning data protection and limits on encryption of user data. Adverse legal rulings, legislation, or regulation have resulted in, and may continue to result in, fines and orders requiring that we change our data practices, which could have an adverse effect on our ability to provide services, harming our business operations. Complying with these evolving laws could result in substantial costs and harm the quality of our products and services, negatively affecting our business, and may be particularly challenging during certain times, such as a natural disaster or pandemic. Amongst others, we are and will be subject to the following laws and regulations:
•The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or related to products and services that we offer to EU users or customers, or the monitoring of their behavior in the EU. Ensuring compliance with the range of obligations created by the GDPR is an ongoing commitment that involves substantial costs. Despite our efforts, governmental authorities or others have asserted and may continue to assert that our business practices fail to comply with its requirements. If our operations are found to violate the GDPR requirements, we may incur substantial fines, have to change our business practices, and face reputational harm, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business. Serious breaches of the GDPR can result in administrative fines of up to 4% of annual worldwide revenues. Fines of up to 2% of annual worldwide revenues can be levied for other specified violations.
•Various state privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), which came into effect in January of 2020; the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which will go into effect in 2023; the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (Virginia CDPA), which will go into effect in 2023; and the Colorado Privacy Act (ColoPA), which will go into effect in 2023; all of which give new data privacy rights to their respective residents (including, in California, a private right of action in the event of a data breach resulting from our failure to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices) and impose significant obligations on controllers and processors of consumer data.
•SB-327 in California, which regulates the security of data in connection with internet connected devices.
Further, we are subject to evolving laws and regulations that dictate whether, how, and under what circumstances we can transfer, process and/or receive personal data. The EU-U.S. and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks that previously allowed U.S. companies that self-certify to the U.S. Department of Commerce and publicly commit to comply with specified requirements to import personal data from the EU and Switzerland have been invalidated by the CJEU. The CJEU upheld Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) as a valid transfer mechanism, provided they meet certain requirements. On June 4, 2021, the European Commission published new SCCs for this purpose, and we may have to adapt our existing contractual arrangements to meet these new requirements. The validity of data transfer mechanisms remains subject to legal, regulatory, and political developments in both Europe and the U.S., such as recent recommendations from the European Data Protection Board, decisions from supervisory authorities, recent proposals for reform of the data transfer mechanisms for transfers of personal data outside the United Kingdom, and potential invalidation of other data transfer mechanisms, which, together with increased enforcement action from supervisory authorities in relation to cross-border transfers of personal data, could have a significant adverse effect on our ability to process and transfer personal data outside of the European Economic Area and/or the United Kingdom.
These laws and regulations are evolving and subject to interpretation, including developments which create some uncertainty, and compliance obligations could cause us to incur costs or harm the operations of our products and services in ways that harm our business. For example, in the EU, several supervisory authorities have issued new guidance concerning the ePrivacy Directive’s requirements regarding the use of cookies and similar technologies, including limitations on the use of data across messaging products and specific requirements for enabling users to accept or reject cookies, and have in some cases brought (and may seek to bring in the future) enforcement action in relation to those requirements. In the U.S., certain types of cookies may be deemed sales of personal information
within the CCPA and other state laws, such that certain disclosure requirements and limitations apply to the use of such cookies. In addition, some countries are considering or have passed legislation implementing data protection requirements or requiring local storage and processing of data that could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our services and carries the potential of service interruptions in those countries.
We face, and may continue to face, intellectual property and other claims that could be costly to defend, result in significant damage awards or other costs (including indemnification awards), and limit our ability to use certain technologies in the future.
We, like other internet, technology and media companies, are frequently subject to litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. In addition, patent-holding companies may frequently seek to generate income from patents they have obtained by bringing claims against us. As we have grown, the number of intellectual property claims against us has increased and may continue to increase as we develop new products, services, and technologies.
We have had patent, copyright, trade secret, and trademark infringement lawsuits filed against us claiming that certain of our products, services, and technologies infringe the intellectual property rights of others. Other parties have also sought broad injunctive relief against us by filing claims in U.S. and international courts and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) for exclusion and cease-and-desist orders, which could limit our ability to sell our products or services in the U.S. or elsewhere if our products or services or those of our customers or suppliers are found to infringe the intellectual property subject to the claims. Adverse results in any of these lawsuits may include awards of monetary damages, costly royalty or licensing agreements (if licenses are available at all), or orders preventing us from offering certain features, functionalities, products, or services. They may also cause us to change our business practices and require development of non-infringing products, services, or technologies, which could result in a loss of revenues for us and otherwise harm our business.
Many of our agreements with our customers and partners, including certain suppliers, require us to defend against certain intellectual property infringement claims and in some cases indemnify them for certain intellectual property infringement claims against them, which could result in increased costs for defending such claims or significant damages if there were an adverse ruling in any such claims. Such customers and partners may also discontinue the use of our products, services, and technologies, as a result of injunctions or otherwise, which could result in loss of revenues and adversely affect our business. Moreover, intellectual property indemnities provided to us by our suppliers, when obtainable, may not cover all damages and losses suffered by us and our customers arising from intellectual property infringement claims. Furthermore, in connection with our divestitures, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, including those associated with intellectual property claims. Regardless of their merits, intellectual property claims are often time consuming and expensive to litigate or settle. To the extent such claims are successful, they may harm our business, including our product and service offerings, financial condition, or operating results.
Risks Related to Ownership of our Stock
We cannot guarantee that any share repurchase program will be fully consummated or will enhance long-term stockholder value, and share repurchases could increase the volatility of our stock prices and could diminish our cash reserves.
We engage in share repurchases of our Class A and Class C stock from time to time in accordance with authorizations from the Board of Directors of Alphabet. Our repurchase program does not have an expiration date and does not obligate Alphabet to repurchase any specific dollar amount or to acquire any specific number of shares. Further, our share repurchases could affect our share trading prices, increase their volatility, reduce our cash reserves and may be suspended or terminated at any time, which may result in a decrease in the trading prices of our stock.
The concentration of our stock ownership limits our stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters.
Our Class B stock has 10 votes per share, our Class A stock has one vote per share, and our Class C stock has no voting rights. As of December 31, 2021, Larry Page and Sergey Brin beneficially owned approximately 85.9% of our outstanding Class B stock, which represented approximately 51.4% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. Through their stock ownership, Larry and Sergey have significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets, for the foreseeable future. In addition, because our Class C stock carries no voting rights (except as required by applicable law), the issuance of the Class C stock, including in future stock-based acquisition transactions and to fund employee equity incentive programs, could continue Larry and Sergey’s current relative voting power and their ability to elect all of our directors and to determine the outcome of most matters submitted to a vote of our stockholders. The share repurchases made pursuant to our repurchase program may also
affect Larry and Sergey’s relative voting power. This concentrated control limits or severely restricts other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and we may take actions that some of our stockholders do not view as beneficial, which could reduce the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock.
Provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could discourage a takeover that stockholders may consider favorable.
Provisions in Alphabet’s certificate of incorporation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. These provisions include the following:
•Our certificate of incorporation provides for a tri-class capital stock structure. As a result of this structure, Larry and Sergey have significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval. This concentrated control could discourage others from initiating any potential merger, takeover, or other change of control transaction that other stockholders may view as beneficial.
•Our Board of Directors has the right to elect directors to fill a vacancy created by the expansion of the Board of Directors or the resignation, death, or removal of a director.
•Our stockholders may not act by written consent, which makes it difficult to take certain actions without holding a stockholders' meeting.
•Our certificate of incorporation prohibits cumulative voting in the election of directors. This limits the ability of minority stockholders to elect director candidates.
•Stockholders must provide advance notice to nominate individuals for election to the Board of Directors or to propose matters that can be acted upon at a stockholders’ meeting. These provisions may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer's own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our company.
•Our Board of Directors may issue, without stockholder approval, shares of undesignated preferred stock, which makes it possible for our Board of Directors to issue preferred stock with voting or other rights or preferences that could impede the success of any attempt to acquire us.
As a Delaware corporation, we are also subject to certain Delaware anti-takeover provisions. Under Delaware law, a corporation may not engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its outstanding voting stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or, among other things, the Board of Directors has approved the transaction. Our Board of Directors could rely on Delaware law to prevent or delay an acquisition of us.
General Risks
The continuing effects of COVID-19 are highly unpredictable and could be significant, and may have an adverse effect on our business, operations and our future financial performance.
Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, our business, operations and financial performance have been, and may continue to be, affected by the macroeconomic impacts resulting from the efforts to control the spread of COVID-19. As a result of the scale of the ongoing pandemic, including the introduction of new variants of COVID-19 and vaccination and other efforts to control the spread, our revenue growth rate and expenses as a percentage of our revenues in future periods may differ significantly from our historical rates, and our future operating results may fall below expectations. Additionally, we may experience a significant and prolonged shift in user behavior such as a shift in interests to less commercial topics.
As a result of the pandemic, our workforce shifted to operating in a primarily remote working environment, which continues to create inherent productivity, connectivity, and oversight challenges. The effects of the ongoing pandemic are dynamic and uneven. As we prepare to return our workforce in more locations back to the office, we may experience increased costs and/or disruption as we experiment with hybrid work models, in addition to potential effects on our ability to operate effectively and maintain our corporate culture.
Our operating results may fluctuate, which makes our results difficult to predict and could cause our results to fall short of expectations.
Our operating results have fluctuated, and may in the future fluctuate, as a result of a number of factors, many outside of our control, including the cyclicality and seasonality in our business and geopolitical events. As a result, comparing our operating results (including our expenses as a percentage of our revenues) on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful, and our past results should not be relied on as an indication of our future performance. Consequently, our operating results in future quarters may fall below expectations.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures could result in operating difficulties, dilution, and other consequences that may harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, investments and divestitures are important elements of our overall corporate strategy and use of capital, and these transactions could be material to our financial condition and operating results. We expect to continue to evaluate and enter into discussions regarding a wide array of such potential strategic transactions, which could create unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. Some of the areas where we face risks include:
•diversion of management time and focus from operating our business to challenges related to acquisitions and other strategic transactions;
•failure to obtain required approvals on a timely basis, if at all, from governmental authorities, or conditions placed upon approval that could, among other things, delay or prevent us from completing a transaction, or otherwise restrict our ability to realize the expected financial or strategic goals of a transaction;
•failure to successfully integrate and further develop the acquired business or technology;
•implementation or remediation of controls, procedures, and policies at the acquired company;
•integration of the acquired company’s accounting, human resource (including cultural integration and retention of employees), and other administrative systems, and coordination of product, engineering, and sales and marketing functions;
•transition of operations, users, and customers onto our existing platforms;
•in the case of foreign acquisitions, the need to integrate operations across different cultures and languages and to address the particular economic, currency, political, and regulatory risks associated with specific countries;
•liability for activities of the acquired company before the acquisition, including patent and trademark infringement claims, data privacy and security issues, violations of laws, commercial disputes, tax liabilities, warranty claims, product liabilities, and other known and unknown liabilities; and
•litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company, including claims from terminated employees, customers, former stockholders, or other third parties.
Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and other strategic transactions could cause us to fail to realize their anticipated benefits, incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally.
Our acquisitions and other strategic transactions could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, or amortization expenses, or impairment of goodwill and/or purchased long-lived assets, and restructuring charges, any of which could harm our financial condition or operating results. Also, the anticipated benefits or value of our acquisitions and other strategic transactions may not materialize. In connection with our divestitures, we have agreed, and may in the future agree, to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities, which may harm our financial condition or operating results.
If we were to lose the services of key personnel, we may not be able to execute our business strategy.
Our future success depends in large part upon the continued service of key members of our senior management team. For instance, Sundar Pichai is critical to the overall management of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and plays an important role in the development of our technology, maintaining our culture, and setting our strategic direction. All of our executive officers and key employees are at-will employees, and we do not maintain any key-person life insurance policies. The loss of key personnel could seriously harm our business.
We rely on highly skilled personnel and, if we are unable to retain or motivate key personnel, hire qualified personnel, or maintain our corporate culture, we may not be able to grow effectively.
Our performance largely depends on the talents and efforts of highly skilled individuals. Our ability to compete effectively and our future success depends on our continuing to identify, hire, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled personnel for all areas of our organization. Competition in our industry for qualified employees is intense, and certain of our competitors have directly targeted our employees. In addition, our compensation arrangements, such as our equity award programs, may not always be successful in attracting new employees and retaining and motivating our existing employees. Restrictive immigration policy and regulatory changes may also affect our ability to hire, mobilize, or retain some of our global talent.
In addition, we believe that our corporate culture fosters innovation, creativity, and teamwork. As our organization grows and evolves, we may need to implement more complex organizational management structures or adapt our corporate culture and work environments to ever-changing circumstances, such as during times of a natural disaster or pandemic, and these changes could affect our ability to compete effectively or have an adverse effect on our corporate culture.
We are exposed to fluctuations in the fair values of our investments and, in some instances, our financial statements incorporate valuation methodologies that are subjective in nature resulting in fluctuations over time.
The fair value of our investments may in the future be, and certain investments have been in the past, negatively affected by liquidity, credit deterioration or losses, performance and financial results of the underlying entities, foreign exchange rates, changes in interest rates, including changes that may result from the implementation of new benchmark rates, the effect of new or changing regulations, the stock market in general, or other factors.
We measure certain of our non-marketable equity and debt securities, certain other instruments including stock-based compensation awards settled in the stock of certain Other Bets, and certain assets and liabilities acquired in a business combination, at fair value on a nonrecurring basis. The determination of fair value involves use of appropriate valuation methods and certain unobservable inputs, requires management judgment and estimation, and may change over time. We adjust the carrying value of our non-marketable equity securities to fair value for observable transactions of identical or similar investments of the same issuer or for impairments. All gains and losses on non-marketable equity securities, are recognized in other income (expense), which increases the volatility of our other income (expense). The unrealized gains and losses we record from fair value remeasurements of our non-marketable equity securities in any particular period may differ significantly from the gains or losses we ultimately experience on such investments.
As a result of these factors, the value or liquidity of our cash equivalents, as well as our marketable and non-marketable securities could decline and result in a material impairment, which could adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.
We could be subject to changes in tax rates, the adoption of new U.S. or international tax legislation, or exposure to additional tax liabilities.
Our future income taxes could be negatively affected by earnings being lower than anticipated in jurisdictions that have lower statutory tax rates and higher than anticipated in jurisdictions that have higher statutory tax rates, the net gains and losses recognized by legal entities on certain hedges and related hedged intercompany and other transactions under our foreign exchange risk management program, decreases in our stock price for shares paid as employee compensation, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets or liabilities, the application of different provisions of tax laws or changes in tax laws, regulations, or accounting principles (including changes in the interpretation of existing laws), as well as certain discrete items.
In addition, we are subject to regular review and audit by both domestic and foreign tax authorities. As a result, we have received, and may in the future receive, assessments in multiple jurisdictions, including in Europe, on various tax-related assertions, such as transfer-pricing adjustments or permanent-establishment claims. Any adverse outcome of such a review or audit could have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition and could require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business. It may also subject us to additional litigation and regulatory inquiries, resulting in the diversion of management’s time and attention. In addition, the determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment, and there are many transactions and calculations for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Although we believe our estimates are reasonable, the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and may affect our financial results in the period or periods for which such determination is made.
Furthermore, due to shifting economic and political conditions, tax policies, laws, or rates in various jurisdictions may be subject to significant changes in ways that impair our financial results. Various jurisdictions around the world have enacted or are considering digital services taxes, which could lead to inconsistent and potentially overlapping international tax regimes. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) continues to advance proposals relating to its initiative for modernizing international tax rules, with the goal of having different countries implement a modernized and aligned international tax framework, but there can be no guarantee that this will occur.
In addition, in response to significant market volatility and disruptions to business operations resulting from the global spread of COVID-19, legislatures and taxing authorities in many jurisdictions in which we operate may propose changes to their tax rules. These changes could include modifications that have temporary effect, and more permanent
changes. The effect of these potential new rules on us, our long-term tax planning, and our effective tax rate could be material.
The trading price for our Class A stock and non-voting Class C stock may continue to be volatile.
The trading price of our stock has at times experienced substantial price volatility and may continue to be volatile. In addition to the factors discussed in this report, the trading price of our Class A stock and Class C stock have fluctuated, and may continue to fluctuate widely, in response to various factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, among others, the activities of our peers and changes in broader economic and political conditions around the world. These broad market and industry factors may harm the market price of our Class A stock and our Class C stock, regardless of our actual operating performance.