Google's shareholders seek assessment of plans to expand cloud regions

A group of Google parent Alphabet’s shareholders has listed India as a country of “significant human rights concern”, asking for an assessment of the company’s plans to expand data-centre operations due to frequent internet shutdowns and user data requests from the government.

The shareholders have proposed the board of directors commission a report to assess the siting (choosing the location of data centres) of Google Cloud Data Centers in such “human rights hotspots”, which include Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Qatar, and India. It has also sought the company’s strategies for mitigating the related impacts in the report. The proposal has been put forward to seek all shareholders’ votes in the company’s upcoming annual general meeting (AGM), scheduled for June 2.

According to the proxy statement for the AGM, global advocacy group SumOfUs (now renamed Ekō), on behalf of Mari Mennel-Bell, as a lead filer, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate-United States Province, as co-filer, have submitted the proposal.

Several other co-filers have advised the board that they intend to submit the proposal at the meeting.

The advocacy group has pointed to a reported increase in the Indian government’s requests for user data. It referred to Google’s transparency reports, which show a 69 per cent increase in such requests in 2019 and an additional 50 per cent growth as of 2021. Another concern is the “frequ­ent” internet shutdown orders by the authorities.

Google’s human rights policy says the company is guided by “internationally recognised human rights stan­dards” in every decision, including the launch of products and expa­nding its operations around the globe.

“Yet, the company’s decisions of siting cloud data centers in human rights hot spots occur behind closed doors, without the promised transparency. A report sufficient to fulfil the proposal’s essential objectives would examine the scope, implementation, and robustness of the company’s human rights due diligence processes on siting of cloud computing operations,” said the proposal the SumOfUs.

Google’s board of directors has recommended the shareholders vote against the proposal.

“Our existing extensive disclosures provide transparency on our approach to evaluating and managing human rights-related risks, including in the context of siting data centers. Therefore, our Board believes the additional report requested by this proposal would not provide additional useful information to our stockholders and recommends a vote AGAINST this proposal,” read the statement by Alphabet made in the notice of the AGM.

Emails requesting Go­ogle and SumOfUs for a comment rema­ined unanswered till the time of going to press.
 

Google Cloud has two cloud regions in India — one in Mumbai and the other in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region). The company, which operates through six cloud zones in India, had announced its plans to expand in the country, eying the digital transformation wave accelerated due to the pandemic. A cloud zone refers to a deployment area for Google Cloud resources within a region.

SumOfUs is an online community that claims to hold global corporations accou­ntable on issues such as climate change, workers’ rig­hts, discrimination, hu­m­­­­­an rights, animal rights, corruption, and corporate power grab.

The group recently proposed an inquiry into allegations of political entanglement and content ma­­­­n­a­gement biases in Me­ta Platforms’s operations in India. Ho­w­ever, the shareholders of Meta Plat­forms have voted against the ass­e­­­­ssment, which could focus on how the platform has been utilised to fom­ent ethnic and religious conflict and hatred.