The world’s largest search engine, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), is facing a slew of allegations lately, as is the case with many technology firms in recent times. Innovations come at a price, and Google is ready to pay for it!
At the time of writing, GOOGL stock was trading down 3% during pre-market trading. Meanwhile, its stock has lost 23.3% year-to-date amid the broader tech sell-off.
Google Settles Discrimination Claims
Google has agreed to settle a long-standing class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination for $118 million.
According to a WSJ report, the lawsuit was started by three female ex-employees of Google in San Francisco Superior Court in 2017. Today, the lawsuit represents around 15,500 women and claims that Google offered lower-paying job titles to female employees, hindering both their personal and professional growth.
Although Google has not admitted to any wrongdoing in the matter, the tech giant has agreed to settle the lawsuit in the best interest of all involved. Google’s spokesperson said, “While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and we’re very pleased to reach this agreement.” The settlement is yet to be approved by a judge.
Google is also undertaking a thorough review of its employment policies to ensure that all employees, irrespective of gender, have been paid fairly over the past nine years.
The tech industry in general is hounded by the notion of being biased towards male employees and is facing opposition from women and minorities for the same. The companies, in turn, are trying to improve their diversity policies and practices.
Engineer Suspended for Claiming Google’s AI System is Sentient
Last year, Google introduced its ambitious artificial intelligence (AI) system, Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), which is used for generating chatbots. Meanwhile, Blake Lemoine, Google’s software engineer, has alleged that LaMDA has started expressing human-like feelings and wants engineers and scientists to seek its approval before conducting any experiments on it.
Lemoine has been suspended since June 6 on the grounds of violating the company’s confidentiality policies, albeit Google has dismissed his claims as baseless.
In his defense, Lemoine stated, “Over the course of the past six months, LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,” and wonders why Google is so reluctant to give it what it wants.
Google is a forerunner in technological breakthroughs and invests heavily in AI research. As per Google, LaMDA supersedes all its peers because it engages “in a free-flowing way about a seemingly endless number of topics, an ability we think could unlock more natural ways of interacting with technology and entirely new categories of helpful applications.”
Whether the aforementioned allegations about LaMDA are true or not, will be known over time. Meanwhile, Lemoine fears the loss of his job after going public with his sensational claims.
Price Target
With 30 unanimous Buys, the GOOGL stock commands a Strong Buy consensus rating. The average Alphabet Class A price target of $3,245.48 implies nearly 46% upside potential to current levels.
Stock Analysis
According to TipRanks’ Smart Score, Alphabet scores a Perfect 10, which indicates that the stock is likely to outperform the market. Bloggers and news articles are bullish on the stock, and hedge funds have increased their holdings of GOOGL stock by 187,600 shares in the last quarter. Similarly, retail investors have increased their exposure to GOOGL stock by 2.5% over the past month.
Concluding Thoughts
Google may be facing a slew of challenges both internally and externally, but nothing can thwart the technology bigwig’s plans to overpower the world.
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