Who Owns Google

Alphabet (Google) 🐔🐔🐔

Capitulation Rank: Capitulating
Category: Online Platforms & Streaming 
Market Cap: $2.17 trillion 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai joined the cowards’ row of Silicon Valley CEOs during Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Prior to the swearing in, parent company Alphabet announced that it would make a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee. Pichai’s priorities are to see that the Trump Justice Department abandons two high-profile antitrust lawsuits aimed at breaking Google’s market power. But Pichai was also at the ceremony to ensure his company has a seat at the table when it comes to shaping AI policy — and winning lucrative government AI contracts — in a Trump-controlled Washington.

In a company-wide meeting in February 2025, Google announced plans to scrap the tech giant’s diversity initiatives. The Google Calendar also “disappeared” Black History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Pride Month, Women’s History Month and other popular observances. Google also announced that its Maps tool would now give preference to Trump’s jingoist name — the “Gulf of America” — for the Gulf of Mexico. Pichai told Google staff that the company “deeply cared” about workforce diversity but that it now had to comply with a Trump executive order directing federal agencies and contractors to dismantle their DEI work.

Google is deeply reliant on several government contracts and is participating in a $9 billion joint Pentagon contract alongside Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle. It’s also under contract to provide the tech at the center of federal projects to upgrade the “virtual wall” that surveils the U.S. border.

Ranking update: Google earns another chicken after YouTube payoff to Trump

Google’s top brass in September 2025 joined the ranks of cowardly media owners when its video platform YouTube decided to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against the platform after it suspended his account following his incitement of the violent Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

YouTube suspended President Trump’s account days after Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol Building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. At the time the streaming platform cited Trump’s potential to incite further political violence as the legitimate rationale driving its suspension. 

YouTube’s million-dollar payoff implies the tech company was wrong for deplatforming Trump as he orchestrated a violent uprising against American democracy. In reality, the company caved to Trump’s demands and offered a massive payout (aka bribe) to curry favor with a regime that has the power to withhold billions of dollars in federal contracts or pursue antitrust enforcement against any tech giant that doesn’t toe the Trump line.  

What It Owns:

Online services (including AdScape, AdSense, AdWords, Blogger, Chrome, Cloud, Flights, Gmail, Google Search, Shopping, Maps, Nest, Translate, Waze and Workspace); online streaming (including YouTube Music and TV); wired and wireless telecommunications services and products (including Fitbit, Google Fiber and Pixel); other (including DeepMind AI, Gemini AI, Jigsaw, Sycamore quantum computing, Verily, Waymo self-driving technology and Wing).

Money & Influence Game:

Alphabet paid lobbyists $14,790,000 in 2024, and Alphabet employees made $20,604,525 in contributions to political candidates (2024 cycle). (SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics)