Item 1A. Risk Factors
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described in Part I, Item 1A, "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results, and may affect the trading price and price volatility of our Class A and Class C stock.
Below are material changes to our risk factors since our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025.
Risks Specific to our Company
Our increasing investment in new businesses, products, services, and technologies is inherently risky, and could divert management attention and harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We have invested and expect to expand our investment in new businesses, products, services, and technologies in a wide range of industries beyond online advertising. The investments that we are making across our businesses — such as building AI-optimized infrastructure, including our custom TPUs, and integrating AI capabilities into new and existing products and services — reflect our ongoing efforts to innovate and provide products and services that are helpful to users, advertisers, publishers, customers, content providers, and distribution partners. Our 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, including those arising from the implementation of new regulatory requirements.
We have invested and expect to significantly expand our investment in property and equipment, including our technical infrastructure, and we expect these assets to benefit our business over their estimated useful lives. Changes in facts and circumstances such as changes to historical asset performance, expected technology advancements, and future network deployment plans could change the period over which we expect to benefit from the asset and impact our financial condition and operating results.
Innovations in our products and services could also result in changes to user and customer behavior and affect our revenue trends. These endeavors involve significant risks and uncertainties, including diversion of resources and management attention from current operations, different monetization models, and 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 in devices, 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, increased market saturation in developed countries, short product life cycles, evolving industry standards, continual improvement in 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 devices that compete effectively.
Within Google Cloud, we devote significant resources to develop and deploy our enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, and we are advancing our AI platforms and models to support these tools and technologies, including the development of our custom TPUs and how we deliver them to our customers. We are incurring significant and increasing costs and liabilities to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services, invest in cybersecurity, and hire talent. Meanwhile, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services and capacity. Pricing and delivery models, which are subject to increasing regulatory scrutiny and requirements, are competitive and constantly evolving, and we may therefore not achieve our business objectives. Further, our business with financial services, healthcare, and public sector customers may present additional risks, including regulatory compliance risks. For instance, we may be subject to government audits and cost reviews, and any failure to comply or any deficiencies found may expose us to legal, financial, and reputational risks. Evolving laws and regulations may require us to make new capital investments, build new products, and seek partners to deliver localized services in other countries, and we may not be able to meet sovereign operating requirements.
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To meet the AI compute capacity demands of our customers, we are engaging in the supply of TPU systems which may increase our costs and operational complexity. We also have a number of large, long-duration commercial agreements, which could increase our liabilities and obligations in the event of nonperformance by us, our counterparties, or vendors. These include certain financial guarantees, such as backstops to support the build-out of third-party data centers and power infrastructure. In the event of such nonperformance or industry challenges, we may incur additional liabilities, have excess capacity that we cannot easily redeploy, and not receive payments from our counterparties or customers.
Within Other Bets, we are investing significantly in areas such as transportation and life sciences, among others. These investment areas face intense competition from large, experienced, and well-funded competitors, and our offerings, many of which involve the development of new and emerging technologies, may not be successful, or be able to compete effectively or operate at sufficient levels of profitability.
In addition, new and evolving products and services, including those that use AI, raise ethical, technological, legal, regulatory, and other challenges, which could harm our brands and demand for our products and services. Because all of these investment areas are inherently risky, no assurance can be given that such strategies and offerings will be successful or will not harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.
Disruptions in our ability to access the capital markets, obtain future financing, or manage our indebtedness could adversely affect our ability to execute our strategy and harm our financial condition.
We may from time to time access capital markets for debt or equity, including through our ATM Program, or any derivative securities thereof, or seek to enter into other forms of financing, such as leases. Any difficulty in accessing capital markets, entering into other forms of financing on favorable terms, or managing our existing indebtedness could increase our costs of financing and restrict our ability to invest in our business. Furthermore, our current and any future indebtedness, including obligations arising under leases, backstops, guarantees, and potential liabilities from large commercial agreements, combined with the dilutive impact of current or future equity issuances, could harm our financial condition, depress our stock price or reduce our financial and business flexibility.
Risks Related to Laws, Regulations, and Policies
Privacy, data protection, data usage, and portability 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, data usage and portability, and encryption of user data. Additionally, the increasing adoption of AI technologies, which rely on the collection of large amounts of data and use of such data for training purposes, has led data protection authorities around the world to consider and adopt new and evolving interpretations of data protection laws, imposing specific obligations with respect to the processing of personal data, including required notices, consents, and opt-outs. Further, the increased risk of inadvertent disclosure of confidential information or personal data in connection with the utilization of AI technologies may result in stronger regulatory scrutiny, leading to legal and regulatory investigations and enforcement actions that could harm our business, even if unfounded. Adverse legal rulings, legislation, or regulation have resulted in, and may continue to result in, fines and orders requiring that we change our practices, which have had and could continue to have an adverse effect on how we provide services, harming our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. These laws and regulations are evolving and subject to interpretation, and compliance obligations could cause us to incur substantial costs or harm the quality and operations of our products and services in ways that harm our business. Examples of these laws include:
• The EU General Data Protection Regulation and the UK General Data Protection Regulations, which apply to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or the UK, respectively, or related to products and services that we offer to EU or the UK users or customers, respectively, or the monitoring of their behavior in the EU or the UK, respectively.
• Various US federal, US state, and foreign privacy laws related to the processing and security of personal data, including (1) comprehensive privacy laws that provide data privacy rights (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; (2) laws imposing obligations on businesses that collect or disclose biometric information (including, in Colorado, Illinois, Texas, and Washington); (3) laws governing the collection and processing of children and minor's data and how companies provide age-appropriate online experiences
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(including, in the US, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998; the pending Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0); similar US state laws related to children's privacy, such as the New York Child Data Protection Act; and the UK's Age-Appropriate Design Code); and (4) laws regulating internet-connected devices (such as, in California, the Internet of Things Security Law).
• The EU's Digital Markets Act, which requires in-scope companies to obtain user consent for combining data across certain products, mandate the sharing of search data with third-party search engines, and require interoperable access to the Android operating system by third-party AI companies, among other changes; and the EU Data Act, which introduces new data portability requirements with respect to connected products (i.e., 'internet of things' products) and related services, as well as interoperability obligations on data processing services.
Further, we are subject to evolving laws and regulations that dictate whether, how, and under what circumstances we can transfer, process, or receive personal data, as well as ongoing enforcement actions from supervisory authorities related to cross-border transfers of personal data. The validity of various data transfer mechanisms we currently rely upon remains subject to legal, regulatory, and political developments globally, which may require us to adapt our existing arrangements.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Stock
Additional issuances of our Class A stock or Class C stock under our ATM Program, any conversions of our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock to Class A stock or Class C stock and any other future sales or other issuances of our Class A stock or Class C stock could dilute our existing stockholders or otherwise depress the market prices of our Class A stock and Class C stock.
In June 2026, we established an ATM Program, pursuant to which we may offer and sell up to $40 billion of shares of our Class A stock and Class C stock to or through sales agents under established limits. Any sales under our ATM Program could have dilutive effects for our existing stockholders over time. In addition, the conversion of some or all of our shares of Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock and our depositary shares, or any election to settle our contractually required dividend payments on our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock in the form of Class A stock or Class C stock, could also have dilutive effects for our existing stockholders over time.
The market prices of our Class A stock or Class C stock is likely to be influenced by any sales under our ATM Program, the issuance of additional Class A stock or Class C stock in connection with the conversion of or dividend payments on our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock and our depositary shares, or any other future sales or other issuances of our Class A stock or Class C stock. Market prices could be depressed as a result of: (1) investors’ anticipation of the potential sale or resale, as applicable, under the ATM Program or received upon conversion of our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock or our depositary shares; (2) possible sales of our Class A stock or Class C stock by investors who view the Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock or our depositary shares as a more attractive means of equity participation in us than owning shares of Class A stock or Class C stock; and (3) any hedging or arbitrage trading activity involving the Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stocks or our depositary shares and our Class A stock or Class C stock. There is no assurance that any depression in the market price from such dilution will only be in the short-term or temporary.
We cannot guarantee that we will make repurchases under any share repurchase program, that our common stock dividend program will be continuously active or fully consummated, or that the required dividend payments on our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock together with any repurchases or dividends on our common stock will enhance long-term stockholder value. Further, share repurchases or dividends could increase the volatility of our stock prices and could diminish our cash reserves.
We have historically engaged in share repurchases of our Class A stock 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 and we retain discretion as to whether and when to utilize this program. Although we have an authorized share repurchase program, there can be no assurances that we will make repurchases in the near term or at all. Furthermore, if we are utilizing the repurchase program at the time of any future offerings of our equity securities, including offerings of our Class A stock or Class C stock under our ATM Program, we may be required to suspend share repurchases, which could further exacerbate any decrease in the trading prices of our stock from dilution or otherwise.
Our cash dividend program pays regular cash dividends to our Class A, Class B and Class C stockholders. Any and all future cash dividends on our common stock are subject to declaration by our Board of Directors in its sole discretion, and in accordance with the requirements of any applicable laws, rules and regulations, including the
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Delaware General Corporation Law. Our common stock cash dividend program does not require, and our Board of Directors may decide not to declare, a cash dividend each quarter, and does not obligate our Board of Directors to declare a dividend at any specific dollar amount per share. Any such decision by our Board of Directors may depend on a variety of factors that it may deem relevant, including but not limited to our earnings, liquidity, financial condition, other capital deployment opportunities, level of indebtedness and general market conditions. Separately, we are contractually required to make regular dividend payments on our Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock, which will diminish our cash reserves or cause dilution if we elect to settle in shares.
Our share repurchases and dividends 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.
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.