Google urged to split up by activist shareholders

But parent company Alphabet rejects all proposals

A group of Alphabet shareholders has urged the company to split itself into separate companies before regulators force it to do that.

The proposal was put forward on Wednesday by a US-based group named SumOfUS at Alphabet's annual shareholder meeting held at Google cloud computing unit's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

SumOfUs, which aims to restrict the growing powers of several tech firms, said at the meeting that Alphabet has become too big to manage.

"Officials in the US and EU continue to be concerned about Alphabet's market power in view of restrictions on monopolies," the proposal stated.

"We believe that shareholders could receive greater value from a voluntary strategic reduction in the size of the company than from asset sales compelled by regulators."

SumOfUS urged Google to sell off some of its assets now "rather than waiting for antitrust regulators to set a path".

Following the meeting, many Alphabet employees and human rights activists also organised a rally outside the Google's office, according to Reuters.

In total, 14 proposals were made by the investors and Google employees during investors' meeting.

However, none of the proposals was passed, according to a preliminary tally. There was no chance of the proposal being approved by the company as Alphabet's top two executives, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, currently hold 51.3 per cent of shareholder votes.

But such proposals do suggest rising dissatisfaction among some shareholders and the company's employees over multiple issues, relating to inequitable employment practices, sexual harassment in Google offices, and the company's work in China.

For the past couple of years, most big tech firms have faced mounting pressures from the public, human rights groups and regulatory agencies over privacy issues and misuse of powers.

The US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are currently looking into possible antitrust actions against Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. US presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren has publically said that Google, Facebook and Amazon need to be split up in order to prevent them from misusing their powers to kill competition in the market.

Alphabet declined to comment on the Wednesday's proposals. The company just said that its current policies adequately address all the issues raised in the proposals.

In coming days, Google may respond to many of the issues raised by employees and investors. A few months back, the company announced that it was stopping work on a censored Chinese search engine. Google has also banned use of its artificial intelligence technology for weaponry.

On Wednesday, a new 10-member board was approved at investors meeting. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google Cloud head Diane Greene were not seeking re-election in the board.