For years, Google has faced criticism about its dominant role in the search engine market. It also has been accused of manipulating search results, and chastised for giving off the impression that the only worthwhile information is that which appears on the site.
Researcher Safiya Noble has also pointed to the ways in which Google engineers and facilitates racism, citing incidents in which Black women and girls have been sexualized, and in which Black people have been classified as subhuman according to Google's algorithms. Google apologized for some of these incidents individually, but has made no effort to change or adapt its technology to fix the problem on a structural level.
In December 2020, Google was hit with three antitrust cases which claim that it engages in “anti-competitive” practices, a stance which it denies. But it cannot be denied that the company holds profound sway over the way we conduct our digital lives, even getting its name added as a verb to the English dictionary.