Alphabet Inc.
American international technology conglomerate
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| 2024 | Projected significant growth with revenue expected to reach $350 billion, net income of $100 billion, and workforce expanding to 183,000 employees. |
| December 10 2024 | Alphabet unveiled its new quantum computing chip 'Willow', which solved a complex problem in five minutes – a task that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe. The announcement caused Alphabet's shares to rise about 5%, with the stock up 25% for the year. |
| August 2024 | A United States district court found Alphabet guilty of violating antitrust law in a landmark ruling, marking the first such ruling against a U.S. company in 24 years. Alphabet has appealed the ruling. |
| April 26 2024 | Alphabet surpassed a market valuation of $2 trillion for the first time, following the announcement of its first-ever dividend payout and a $70 billion stock buyback program, alongside exceeding first-quarter earnings expectations. |
| March 2024 | 43 YouTube Music Union contractors were notified of their termination by Cognizant during a live Austin City Council session. The council passed a resolution asking Google to negotiate with the workers. |
| January 2024 | Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous driving division, filed an application with the California Public Utilities Commission to expand service in Los Angeles. |
| 2023 | Alphabet was ranked 7th in the Global 2000 (World's Largest Public Companies). |
| November 2023 | Accenture contract workers at Google voted to form a union. AWU signed a collective agreement with Accenture that bans keystroke logging and guarantees permanent remote work for 25 employees. |
| June 2023 | Unionization efforts began for Accenture contract workers at Google after contractors were asked to handle lewd prompts from the initial Bard chatbot. |
| April 2023 | YouTube Music contractors unanimously voted 41-0 to form the YouTube Music Union, which Google would be obligated to negotiate with despite their direct employment by Cognizant. |
| March 2023 | NLRB ruling established that Google could be directly held liable for treatment of sub-contracted companies in joint-employment relations. |
| February 2023 | 40 Cognizant contractors working as YouTube Music content moderators went on Google's first strike, protesting changes to remote work policy requiring return to Austin, Texas office. |
| January 20 2023 | CEO Sundar Pichai announced a significant workforce reduction, laying off approximately 12,000 jobs (6% of global workforce) due to changed economic conditions. |
| 2022 | Alphabet became the company with the second-highest expenditure on research and development worldwide, spending US$39.5 billion on R&D. |
| October 2022 | Alphabet recorded its weakest quarterly growth, experiencing fewer sales in nearly a decade, attributed to potential global recession, strong US dollar, and pandemic impacts. |
| June 2022 | Alphabet completed a stock split in mid-2022. |
| May 2022 | Russian authorities seized Google's Russian bank account, forcing the company to file for bankruptcy the following month while maintaining free services. |
| March 2022 | Google Fiber subcontractors became the first members within the AWU to gain National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recognition, marking a significant milestone for the union's organizational efforts. |
| November 2021 | Alphabet launched Isomorphic Labs, a new company using artificial intelligence for drug discovery, headed by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. |
| July 2021 | Alphabet announced Intrinsic, a new robotics software company spun out of X Development. |
| June 12 2021 | Japan announced an antitrust probe into Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. to investigate potential violations in their dealings with Japanese smartphone makers. |
| June 7 2021 | Alphabet Inc. settled an antitrust suit with the French Autorité de la concurrence, paying $270 million, which was less than 0.7% of the company's yearly earnings. |
| February 10 2021 | The union successfully pressured the company to re-admit Shannon Wait to work after she was suspended for pro-union activities, marking a significant victory for worker protection and union advocacy. |
| February 4 2021 | Alphabet Workers Union members expressed support for data center workers, including Shannon Wait, who were advocating for basic workplace rights such as the right to drink water and discussing wage and working conditions. |
| January 2021 | Loon LLC announced its shutdown due to lack of a scalable and sustainable business model, with CEO Alastair Westgarth making the announcement in a blog post. |
| January 4 2021 | Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) was officially announced with an initial membership of over 400 workers, following more than a year of secret organizing. The union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time employees, temporary workers, vendors, and contractors across various job types. |
| 2020 | Strong performance during COVID-19 pandemic with revenue growing to $182 billion, net income reaching $40.2 billion, and employee count increasing to 135,000. |
| December 2 2020 | The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint alleging Alphabet Inc. conducted unlawful monitoring and questioning of workers attempting to unionize, with Alphabet denying any wrongdoing. |
| October 2020 | The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet, alleging anti-competitive practices. |
| July 2020 | The Google+ privacy lawsuit was settled for $7.5 million, with claimants receiving between $5 and $12 each. |
| January 16 2020 | Alphabet became the fourth US company to reach a $1 trillion market value, entering the trillion-dollar companies club. |
| 2019 | Continued expansion with revenue increasing to $161 billion, net income rising to $34.3 billion, and workforce expanding to 118,000 employees. |
| December 3 2019 | Larry Page and Sergey Brin jointly announced their step-down from executive roles, with Sundar Pichai becoming CEO of both Alphabet and Google while they remained as employees with majority board voting power. |
| June 2019 | Chronicle Security was merged with Google Cloud, consolidating Alphabet's security and cloud computing operations. |
| 2018 | Eric Schmidt disclosed the origin of the Alphabet name, revealing it was inspired by the ABC-Straße street address of Google's Hamburg office |
| 2018 | Larry Page steps down as Chief Executive after leading the company from 2015 to 2018. |
| 2018 | Significant growth continues with revenue reaching $136 billion, net income rebounding to $30.7 billion, and employee count growing to 98,700. |
| October 2018 | A class action lawsuit was filed against Google and Alphabet over a privacy bug that exposed non-public Google+ account data to app developers. |
| February 2018 | John L. Hennessy becomes Chair of Alphabet Inc., replacing Eric Schmidt who had served from 2015 to 2017. |
| February 2018 | Uber settled the Waymo lawsuit, agreeing not to use the disputed self-driving technology and providing Waymo with a 0.34% equity stake worth approximately $245 million. |
| February 2018 | Nest Labs was merged into Google, becoming part of the company's internal structure. |
| 2017 | Alphabet Inc. filed a lawsuit against Uber over allegedly stolen self-driving car technology, involving 14,000 proprietary documents downloaded by a former Waymo engineer. |
| 2017 | Alphabet Inc. was identified as the most active investor in the year, surpassing Intel's capital arm and acquiring seven of its own capital-backed startups during the financial year. |
| 2017 | Company shows growth with revenue increasing to $110 billion, though net income dropped to $12.6 billion. Employee count rises to 80,100. |
| November 2017 | Alphabet Inc. led a Series A investment round of $71 million in UnitedMasters, a music startup, alongside Andreessen Horowitz and 20th Century Studios. The startup was founded by Steve Stoute. |
| 2016 | Alphabet Inc. reports annual revenue of $90.2 billion, with net income of $19.4 billion and 72,000 employees. |
| February 1 2016 | Alphabet Inc. surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company, holding the position briefly until February 3, 2016. |
| October 2015 | Alphabet adopted the corporate code of conduct motto 'Do the right thing', modifying the original Google motto 'Don't be evil' |
| October 2 2015 | Alphabet Inc. was created through a restructuring of Google, establishing itself as a parent holding company for Google and several former Google subsidiaries. |
| August 10 2015 | Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced the creation of Alphabet Inc. as a new public holding company, restructuring Google and separating its subsidiaries under a new corporate structure. |
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