The tabular information that follows shows data of reportable segments reconciled to amounts reflected in our Consolidated Financial Statements. Intersegment transactions are not eliminated from segment results when management considers those transactions in assessing the results of the respective segments. Furthermore, our management does not consider investment and derivative gains/losses, impairments or amortization of certain business acquisition accounting adjustments or certain other corporate income and expense items in assessing the financial performance of operating units. Collectively, these items are included in reconciliations of segment amounts to consolidated amounts.


BRK.A Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (26)Business segment data

Berkshire’s operating segments are as follows. Business Identity##Business Activity Insurance:## GEICO##Underwriting private passenger automobile insurance mainly by direct response methods Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group##Underwriting multiple lines of property and casualty insurance policies for primarily commercial accounts Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group##Underwriting excess-of-loss, quota-share and facultative reinsurance worldwide Railroad (“BNSF”)##Operation of one of the largest railroad systems in North America through Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC Berkshire Hathaway Energy (“BHE”)##Regulated electric and gas utility, including power generation and distribution activities and real estate brokerage activities through Berkshire Hathaway Energy Company and affiliates Pilot Travel Centers (“PTC”)##Largest operator of travel centers in North America and a marketer of wholesale fuel Manufacturing##Manufacturers of numerous products including industrial, consumer and building products, including home building and related financial services McLane Company (“McLane”)##Wholesale distribution of groceries and non-food items Service and retailing##Providers of numerous services including shared aircraft ownership programs, aviation pilot training, electronic components distribution, various retailing businesses, including automobile dealerships and trailer and furniture leasing


A disaggregation of our consolidated data for each of the three most recent years is presented as follows (in millions). ##########Revenues################Earnings (loss) before income taxes######## ####2023######2022####2021######2023######2022######2021## Operating Businesses################################## Insurance:################################## Underwriting:################################## GEICO##$##39,264####$##38,984##$##37,706####$##3,635####$##(1,880##)##$##1,259## Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group####17,129######13,746####11,575######1,374######393######607## Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group####27,010######21,846####20,179######1,904######1,465######(755##) Insurance underwriting####83,403######74,576####69,460######6,913######(22##)####1,111## Investment income####11,619######7,734####5,662######11,581######7,724######5,649## Total insurance####95,022######82,310####75,122######18,494######7,702######6,760## BNSF####23,876######25,888####23,282######6,614######7,708######7,861## BHE####26,008######26,393####25,096######940######3,146######3,293## PTC####51,739######—####—######968######—######—## Manufacturing####75,405######75,781####68,730######11,445######11,177######9,841## McLane####52,607######53,209####49,450######455######271######230## Service and retailing####39,996######38,303####34,832######4,721######4,771######4,481## ####364,653######301,884####276,512######43,637######34,775######32,466## Reconciliation to consolidated amount################################## Investment and derivative gains (losses)####—######—####—######74,855######(67,899##)####78,542## Interest expense, not allocated to segments####—######—####—######(426##)####(420##)####(455##) Non-controlled businesses####—######—####—######1,973######1,863######886## Corporate, eliminations and other####(171##)####136####(327##)####127######1,181######422## ##$##364,482####$##302,020##$##276,185####$##120,166####$##(30,500##)##$##111,861## ##########Interest expense##################Income tax expense (benefit)######## ####2023######2022######2021######2023######2022######2021## Operating Businesses#################################### Insurance##$##—####$##—####$##—####$##3,497####$##1,247####$##1,083## BNSF####1,048######1,025######1,032######1,527######1,763######1,871## BHE####2,283######2,140######2,054######(2,022##)####(1,629##)####(1,153##) PTC####414######—######—######169######—######—## Manufacturing####784######739######704######2,487######2,403######2,193## McLane####—######—######—######117######66######61## Service and retailing####101######42######38######1,135######1,131######1,086## ####4,630######3,946######3,828######6,910######4,981######5,141## Reconciliation to consolidated amount#################################### Investment and derivative gains (losses)####—######—######—######15,930######(14,166##)####16,025## Interest expense, not allocated to segments####426######420######455######(90##)####(88##)####(96##) Non-controlled businesses####—######—######—######223######334######82## Corporate, eliminations and other####(53##)####(14##)####(111##)####46######437######(240##) ##$##5,003####$##4,352####$##4,172####$##23,019####$##(8,502##)##$##20,912##


########Capital expenditures############Depreciation of tangible assets#### ####2023####2022####2021####2023####2022####2021 Operating Businesses######################## Insurance##$##68##$##82##$##62##$##72##$##69##$##72 BNSF####3,920####3,532####2,910####2,581####2,479####2,406 BHE####9,148####7,505####6,611####3,913####3,702####3,584 PTC####705####—####—####510####—####— Manufacturing####2,714####2,477####2,100####2,099####2,021####2,037 McLane####264####93####106####208####176####189 Service and retailing####2,590####1,775####1,487####1,275####1,219####1,177 ##$##19,409##$##15,464##$##13,276##$##10,658##$##9,666##$##9,465 ########Goodwill at year-end############Identifiable assets at year-end#### ####2023####2022####2021####2023####2022####2021 Operating Businesses######################## Insurance##$##16,563##$##16,548##$##15,181##$##538,860##$##459,917##$##483,417 BNSF####15,350####14,852####14,852####79,227####77,752####76,586 BHE####11,804####11,745####11,906####124,383####118,114####113,447 PTC####6,605####—####—####21,404####—####— Manufacturing####27,831####28,460####25,463####115,875####113,578####107,231 McLane####232####232####232####6,861####7,049####6,841 Service and retailing####6,241####6,282####6,241####34,600####31,291####28,221 ##$##84,626##$##78,119##$##73,875####921,210####807,701####815,743 Reconciliation to consolidated amount######################## Corporate and other################64,142####62,645####69,770 Goodwill################84,626####78,119####73,875 ##############$##1,069,978##$##948,465##$##959,388


Property/casualty and life/health insurance premiums written and earned are summarized below (in millions). ##########Property/Casualty##################Life/Health######## ####2023######2022######2021######2023######2022######2021## Premiums Written:#################################### Direct##$##61,990####$##56,700####$##53,829####$##—####$##582####$##646## Assumed####20,751######15,143######12,461######5,126######5,222######5,670## Ceded####(2,402##)####(1,155##)####(1,015##)####(33##)####(37##)####(40##) ##$##80,339####$##70,688####$##65,275####$##5,093####$##5,767####$##6,276## Premiums Earned:#################################### Direct##$##60,437####$##55,879####$##52,139####$##—####$##582####$##646## Assumed####20,442######14,184######12,072######5,105######5,263######5,698## Ceded####(2,548##)####(1,293##)####(1,054##)####(33##)####(39##)####(41##) ##$##78,331####$##68,770####$##63,157####$##5,072####$##5,806####$##6,303##


Insurance premiums written by geographic region (based upon the domicile of the insured or reinsured) are summarized below (in millions). ########Property/Casualty############Life/Health#### ####2023####2022####2021####2023####2022####2021 United States##$##67,831##$##59,648##$##55,451##$##1,285##$##2,107##$##2,143 Asia Pacific####5,306####4,699####3,822####1,760####1,704####2,030 Western Europe####5,014####4,901####4,613####1,323####1,235####1,298 All other####2,188####1,440####1,389####725####721####805 ##$##80,339##$##70,688##$##65,275##$##5,093##$##5,767##$##6,276


BRK.A Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (26)Business segment data (27)Contingencies and commitments

Consolidated sales, service and leasing revenues were $164.1 billion in 2023, $165.0 billion in 2022 and $151.0 billion in 2021. Sales, service and leasing revenues attributable to the United States were 85% in 2023, 86% in 2022 and 85% in 2021 of such amounts. The remainder of sales, service and leasing revenues were primarily in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and Canada. Railroad, utilities and energy revenues were $101.4 billion in 2023, $52.1 billion in 2022 and $48.2 billion in 2021. Railroad, utilities and energy revenues attributable to the United States were 94% in 2023 and 96% in both 2022 and 2021. At December 31, 2023, approximately 90% of our consolidated net property, plant and equipment and equipment held for lease was located in the United States with the remainder primarily in the United Kingdom and Canada.


We are parties in a variety of legal actions that routinely arise out of the normal course of business, including legal actions seeking to establish liability directly through insurance contracts or indirectly through reinsurance contracts issued by Berkshire subsidiaries. Plaintiffs occasionally seek punitive or exemplary damages. We do not believe that such normal and routine litigation will have a material effect on our financial condition or results of operations.


PacifiCorp, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire’s 92% owned subsidiary, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Company (“BHE”), operates as a regulated electric utility in Oregon and other Western states. In September 2020, a severe weather event resulting in high winds, low humidity and warm temperatures, contributed to several major wildfires (the “2020 Wildfires”), which resulted in real and personal property and natural resource damage, personal injuries and loss of life and widespread power outages in Oregon and Northern California. The wildfires spread across certain parts of PacifiCorp’s service territory and surrounding areas across multiple counties in Oregon and California, including Siskiyou County, California; Jackson County, Oregon; Douglas County, Oregon; Marion County, Oregon; Lincoln County, Oregon; and Klamath County, Oregon, burning over 500,000 acres in aggregate. Third-party reports for these wildfires indicate over 2,000 structures destroyed, including residences; several structures damaged; multiple individuals injured; and several fatalities.


On July 29, 2022, the 2022 McKinney Fire began in the Oak Knoll Ranger District of the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County, California located in PacifiCorp’s service territory (the “2022 Wildfire”). Third-party reports indicate that the 2022 Wildfire resulted in 11 structures damaged, 185 structures destroyed, 12 injuries and four fatalities and consumed 60,000 acres in aggregate. The 2020 Wildfires and 2022 Wildfire, together, are referred to as the “Wildfires”.


Investigations into the cause and origin of each of the Wildfires are complex and ongoing and have been or are being conducted by various entities, including the U.S. Forest Service, the California Public Utilities Commission, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Oregon Department of Justice, PacifiCorp and various experts engaged by PacifiCorp.


As of the date of this filing, a significant number of complaints and demands alleging similar claims related to the 2020 Wildfires have been filed in Oregon and California, including a class action complaint in Oregon for which two jury verdicts were issued in June 2023 and January 2024 as described below. The plaintiffs seek damages for economic losses, noneconomic losses, including mental suffering, emotional distress, personal injury and loss of life, punitive damages, other damages and attorneys’ fees. Several insurance carriers have filed subrogation complaints in Oregon and California with allegations similar to those made in the aforementioned complaints. Additionally, the U.S. and Oregon Departments of Justice have informed PacifiCorp that they are contemplating filing actions against PacifiCorp in connection with certain of the Oregon 2020 Wildfires. PacifiCorp is actively cooperating with the U.S. and Oregon Departments of Justice on resolving these alleged claims, including through the pursuit of alternative dispute resolution.


Numerous lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs related to the 2020 Wildfires have been filed in Oregon and California, including a class action complaint against PacifiCorp that was filed in 2020, captioned Jeanyne James et al. v. PacifiCorp et al., in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Oregon (the “James case”). The plaintiffs seek damages for economic losses, non-economic losses, including mental suffering, emotional distress, personal injury and loss of life, punitive damages, other damages and attorneys’ fees.


Amounts sought in the complaints and demands filed in Oregon and in certain demands in California approximate $8 billion, excluding any doubling or trebling of damages included in the complaints. Generally, the complaints filed in California do not specify damages sought and are not included in this amount. Final determinations of liability will only be made following the completion of comprehensive investigations, litigation and similar processes. Multiple lawsuits have also been filed in California on behalf of plaintiffs related to the 2022 Wildfire. The plaintiffs seek damages for economic losses, non-economic losses, including mental suffering, emotional distress, personal injury and loss of life, punitive damages, other damages and attorneys’ fees, but the amount of damages sought is not specified.


BRK.A Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (27)Contingencies and commitments

In June 2023, a jury issued its verdict for the 17 named plaintiffs in the James case finding PacifiCorp liable to the 17 individual plaintiffs and to the class with respect to the four 2020 Wildfires named in the complaint. The jury awarded the 17 named plaintiffs $90 million of damages, including $4 million of economic and property damages, $68 million of non-economic damages and $18 million of punitive damages based on a 0.25 multiplier of the economic and non-economic damages.


In September 2023, the Multnomah County Circuit Court ordered trial dates for two consolidated jury trials including approximately 10 class members each and a third trial for certain commercial timber plaintiffs wherein plaintiffs in each of the three damages phase trials will present evidence regarding their damages. The first of these trials addressing nine individual plaintiffs was held in January 2024 while the remaining trials are scheduled at various dates through April 2024.


In January 2024, the Multnomah County Circuit Court entered a limited judgment and money award for the June 2023 James case verdict. The limited judgment awards the aforementioned damages, as well as doubling of the economic damages and offsetting of any insurance proceeds received by plaintiffs. The limited judgment created a lien against PacifiCorp, attaching a debt for the money awards. PacifiCorp posted a supersedeas bond, which stays any effort to seek payment of the judgment pending final resolution of any appeals. Under ORS 82.010, interest at a rate of 9% per annum will accrue on the judgment commencing at the date the judgment was entered until the entire money award is paid, amended or reversed by an appellate court.


In January 2024, the jury for the first James damages phase trial awarded nine plaintiffs $62 million of damages, including $6 million of economic damages and $56 million of noneconomic damages. After the January 2024 jury verdict, the Multnomah County Circuit Court doubled the economic damages to $12 million and added $16 million of punitive damages using the 0.25 multiplier determined by the jury for the June 2023 James case verdict. PacifiCorp will request that the Multnomah County Circuit Court judge offset the damage awards by deducting insurance proceeds received by any of the nine plaintiffs.


PacifiCorp has filed its notice of appeal of the jury’s findings and damage awards associated with the June 2023 verdict in the James case, including whether the case can proceed as a class action, and filed a motion to stay further damages phase trials. On February 14, 2024, the Oregon Court of Appeals denied PacifiCorp’s request to stay the damages phase trials. PacifiCorp intends to appeal the jury’s damage awards associated with the January 2024 jury verdict once the judgment is entered. On February 13, 2024, the 17 named plaintiffs filed a notice of cross-appeal as to the January 2024 limited judgment and money award. The appeals process and further actions could take several years.


A provision for a loss contingency is recorded when it is probable a liability has been incurred and the amount of loss can be reasonably estimated. PacifiCorp evaluates the related range of reasonably estimated losses and records a loss based on its best estimate within that range or the lower end of the range if there is no better estimate.


Estimated probable losses associated with the Wildfires were based on the information available to the date of this filing, including (i) ongoing cause and origin investigations; (ii) ongoing settlement and mediation discussions; (iii) other litigation matters and upcoming legal proceedings; and (iv) the status of the James case. Wildfire estimated losses include estimates for fire suppression costs, real and personal property damages, natural resource damages for certain areas and non-economic damages such as personal injury damages and loss of life damages that are considered probable of being incurred and that it is able to reasonably estimate at this time and which is subject to change as additional relevant information becomes available.


PacifiCorp recorded estimated pre-tax probable Wildfire losses, before expected related insurance recoveries, of approximately $1.9 billion in 2023 and $225 million in 2022. Such amounts, net of expected insurance recoveries, were approximately $1.7 billion in 2023 and $64 million in 2022, which were included in energy operating expenses in the accompanying Consolidated Statements of Earnings. PacifiCorp paid $631 million in settlements in 2023 and $53 million in 2022 associated with the 2020 Wildfires. PacifiCorp’s cumulative charges to date for estimated probable Wildfire losses through December 31, 2023, before expected insurance recoveries, were $2.4 billion.


It is reasonably possible PacifiCorp will incur significant additional Wildfire losses beyond the amounts currently accrued; however, it is currently unable to reasonably estimate the range of possible additional losses that could be incurred due to the number of properties and parties involved, including claimants in the class to the James case, the variation in those types of properties and lack of available details and the ultimate outcome of legal actions.


HomeServices of America, Inc. (“HomeServices”), a wholly owned subsidiary of BHE, is currently defending against eleven antitrust cases, all in federal district courts. In each case, plaintiffs claim HomeServices and certain of its subsidiaries conspired with co-defendants to artificially inflate real estate commissions by following and enforcing multiple listing service (“MLS”) rules that require listing agents to offer a commission split to cooperating agents in order for the property to appear on the MLS (“Cooperative Compensation Rule”). None of the complaints specify damages sought. However, two cases also allege Texas state law deceptive trade practices claims, for which plaintiffs have provided written notice of the damages sought totaling approximately $9 billion by separate notice as required by Texas law.


In one of these cases, Burnett (formerly Sitzer) et al. v. HomeServices of America, Inc. et al., a jury trial commenced on October 16, 2023, and the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs on October 31, 2023, finding that the named defendants participated in a conspiracy to follow and enforce the Cooperative Compensation Rule, which had the purpose or effect of raising, inflating, or stabilizing broker commission rates paid by home sellers. The jury further found that the class plaintiffs had proved damages in the amount of $1.8 billion. Federal law authorizes trebling of damages and the award of pre-judgment interest and attorney fees. Joint and several liability applies for the co-defendants. HomeServices intends to vigorously appeal on multiple grounds the jury’s findings and damage award. The appeals process and further actions could take several years.


Based on available information to date, HomeServices believes losses are likely to occur as a result of the jury verdict in the Burnett case and that such damages could be up to $5.4 billion, excluding attorneys’ fees, prejudgment interest and other costs subject to determination by the court. However, HomeServices is currently unable to reasonably estimate such loss due to, among other reasons, the joint and several nature of the liability and the early stages of the appeals process.


It is also reasonably possible that HomeServices will incur losses from the ten other antitrust cases. However, HomeServices is unable to reasonably estimate a specific range of possible losses that could be incurred due to, among other reasons, lack of information about the size of the plaintiff class and potential damages, as well as the joint and several nature of potential liability of the defendants.


Berkshire and certain of its subsidiaries are also involved in other kinds of legal actions, some of which assert or may assert claims or seek to impose fines and penalties. We currently believe that liabilities that may arise as a result of such other pending legal actions will not have a material effect on our consolidated financial condition or results of operations.


Our subsidiaries regularly make commitments in the ordinary course of business to purchase goods and services in the future for use in their businesses, which are not yet reflected in our Consolidated Financial Statements. The most significant of our long-term commitments relate to our railroad, utilities and energy businesses, our shared aircraft ownership and leasing business and certain materials purchase commitments. As of December 31, 2023, estimated future payments under those arrangements over the next five years were as follows: $10 billion in 2024, $4 billion in 2025, $3 billion in 2026, $3 billion in 2027 and $2 billion in 2028.


We may be obligated to acquire certain noncontrolling interests in less-than-wholly-owned subsidiaries in the future, pursuant to the terms of agreements with the noncontrolling shareholders for cash or other assets. The timing and the amount of any future payments that might be required to such noncontrolling shareholders are contingent on future actions of the noncontrolling owners and the value of the interest being acquired.


BRK.A K-117

Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure


BRK.A Controls and Procedures

At the end of the period covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the Corporation carried out an evaluation, under the supervision and with the participation of the Corporation’s management, including the Chairman (Chief Executive Officer) and the Senior Vice President (Chief Financial Officer), of the effectiveness of the design and operation of the Corporation’s disclosure controls and procedures pursuant to Exchange Act Rule 13a-15. Based upon that evaluation, the Chairman (Chief Executive Officer) and the Senior Vice President (Chief Financial Officer) concluded that the Corporation’s disclosure controls and procedures are effective in timely alerting them to material information relating to the Corporation (including its consolidated subsidiaries) required to be included in the Corporation’s periodic SEC filings. The report called for by Item 308(a) of Regulation S-K is incorporated herein by reference to Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting, included on page K-66 of this report. The attestation report called for by Item 308(b) of Regulation S-K is incorporated herein by reference to the Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm, included on page K-67 of this report. There has been no change in the Corporation’s internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended December 31, 2023 that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the Corporation’s internal control over financial reporting.


BRK.A Other Information

Berkshire has not adopted a Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement (as defined in Item 408(a)(1)(i) of Regulation S-K) and no directors or executive officers adopted or terminated a Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement or a non-Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement (as defined in Item 408(c) of Regulation S-K) during the fourth quarter of 2023.


BRK.A Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspection

Not applicable.


BRK.A Part III

Except for the information set forth under the caption “Executive Officers of the Registrant” in Part I hereof, information required by this Part (Items 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14) is incorporated by reference from the Registrant’s definitive proxy statement, filed pursuant to Regulation 14A, for the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the Registrant to be held on May 4, 2024, which will involve the election of directors.


BRK.A Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules (a) 1. Financial Statements

The following Consolidated Financial Statements, as well as the Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm, are included in Part II Item 8 of this report: ##PAGE Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm (PCAOB ID No. 34)##K-67 Consolidated Balance Sheets—  December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022##K-70 Consolidated Statements of Earnings—  Years Ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021##K-72 Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income—  Years Ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021##K-73 Consolidated Statements of Changes in Shareholders’ Equity—  Years Ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021##K-73 Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows—  Years Ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021##K-74


BRK.A Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements##K-75 (b) Exhibits

2. Financial Statement Schedule## Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm##K-119 Schedule I—Parent Company Condensed Financial Information  Balance Sheets as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, Statements of Earnings and Comprehensive Income and Cash Flows for the years ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021 and Note to Condensed Financial Information##K-120 Other schedules are omitted because they are not required, information therein is not applicable, or is reflected in the Consolidated Financial Statements or notes thereto.##


See the “Exhibit Index” at page K-122.


BRK.A To the Shareholders and the Board of Directors of

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.


BRK.A Opinion on the Financial Statement Schedule

We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, and for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2023, and the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2023, and have issued our report thereon dated February 24, 2024; such consolidated financial statements and report are included elsewhere in this Form 10-K. Our audits also included the financial statement schedule of the Company listed in the Index at Item 15. This financial statement schedule is the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statement schedule based on our audits. In our opinion, such financial statement schedule, when considered in relation to the financial statements taken as a whole, presents fairly, in all material respects, the information set forth therein.


BRK.A Balance Sheets

######December 31,#### ####2023######2022 Assets:########## Cash and cash equivalents##$##5,566####$##2,777 Short-term investments in U.S. Treasury Bills####16,140######17,628 Investments in and advances to consolidated subsidiaries####546,566######463,094 Investment in The Kraft Heinz Company####13,230######12,937 Other assets####16######12 ##$##581,518####$##496,448 Liabilities and Shareholders’ Equity:########## Accounts payable, accrued interest and other liabilities##$##235####$##355 Income taxes, principally deferred####1,229######1,276


BRK.A Notes payable and other borrowings####18,781######21,393

####20,245######23,024 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ equity####561,273######473,424 ##$##581,518####$##496,448


BRK.A Statements of Earnings and Comprehensive Income

##########Year ended December 31,######## ####2023######2022######2021## Income items:################## From consolidated subsidiaries:################## Dividends and distributions##$##9,717####$##15,724####$##13,462## Undistributed earnings (losses)####85,550######(39,579##)####74,961## ####95,267######(23,855##)####88,423## Investment gains (losses)####(7##)####(34##)####35## Equity in earnings of The Kraft Heinz Company####758######628######269## Other income####906######413######73## ####96,924######(22,848##)####88,800## Cost and expense items:################## General and administrative####244######131######136## Interest expense####636######513######444## Foreign exchange gains on non-U.S. Dollar denominated debt####(371##)####(1,401##)####(1,281##) Income tax expense (benefit)####192######668######(436##) ####701######(89##)####(1,137##) Net earnings (loss) attributable to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders####96,223######(22,759##)####89,937## Other comprehensive income attributable to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders####1,289######3,071######1,871## Comprehensive income attributable to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders##$##97,512####$##(19,688##)##$##91,808##


BRK.A Statements of Cash Flows

##########Year ended December 31,######## ####2023######2022######2021## Cash flows from operating activities:################## Net earnings (loss) attributable to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders##$##96,223####$##(22,759##)##$##89,937## Adjustments to reconcile net earnings (loss) to operating cash flows:################## Investment (gains) losses####7######34######(35##) Undistributed (earnings) losses of consolidated subsidiaries####(85,550##)####39,579######(74,961##) Non-cash dividends from subsidiaries####(1,811##)####(7,220##)####(2,126##) Income taxes payable####(44##)####661######(389##) Other####(1,214##)####(1,833##)####(1,038##) Net cash flows from operating activities####7,611######8,462######11,388## Cash flows from investing activities:################## Investments in and advances to consolidated subsidiaries, net####2,649######(11,852##)####(174##) Purchases of U.S. Treasury Bills####(27,278##)####(44,187##)####(34,988##) Sales and maturities of U.S. Treasury Bills####31,234######37,915######57,296## Other####—######128######—## Net cash flows from investing activities####6,605######(17,996##)####22,134## Cash flows from financing activities:################## Proceeds from borrowings####2,054######1,970######2,174## Repayments of borrowings####(4,310##)####(602##)####(2,167##) Acquisition of treasury stock####(9,171##)####(7,854##)####(27,061##) Net cash flows from financing activities####(11,427##)####(6,486##)####(27,054##) Increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents####2,789######(16,020##)####6,468## Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year####2,777######18,797######12,329## Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year##$##5,566####$##2,777####$##18,797## Other cash flow information:################## Income taxes paid##$##5,630####$##2,259####$##3,403## Interest paid####297######332######377##


BRK.A Note to Condensed Financial Information

Certain 2022 and 2021 amounts were revised for the adoption of Accounting Standards Update 2018-12 “Targeted Improvements to the Accounting for Long-Duration Contracts.” See Note 1(w) to the Consolidated Financial Statements.


As of December 31, 2023, Berkshire owned 26.7% of the outstanding shares of The Kraft Heinz Company (“Kraft Heinz”) common stock, which is accounted for pursuant to the equity method. See Note 5 to the Consolidated Financial Statements. On October 19, 2022, Berkshire acquired all of the outstanding common stock of Alleghany Corporation for $11.5 billion. See Note 2 to the Consolidated Financial Statements.


During 2023, the Parent Company repaid approximately $4.3 billion of maturing senior notes and issued ¥286.4 billion (approximately $2.05 billion) of senior notes with a weighted average interest rate of 1.15% and maturities ranging from 2026 to 2058. As of December 31, 2023, the Parent Company’s non-U.S. Dollar denominated borrowings included €5.6 billion and ¥1,259 billion par value senior notes. The gains and losses from the periodic remeasurement of these non-U.S. Dollar denominated notes due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates are included in earnings.


Parent Company debt maturities over the next five years are as follows: 2024—$1.9 billion; 2025—$2.0 billion; 2026—$4.4 billion; 2027—$2.0 billion and 2028—$1.4 billion. The Parent Company guarantees certain debt of subsidiaries, which aggregated approximately $20.9 billion at December 31, 2023 and primarily consisted of debt issued by Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation. Such guarantees are an absolute, unconditional and irrevocable guarantee for the full and prompt payment when due of all present and future payment obligations. The Parent Company has also provided guarantees in connection with certain retroactive reinsurance contracts issued by subsidiaries. The amounts of subsidiary payments under these contracts, if any, are contingent upon the outcome of future events.


BRK.A EXHIBIT INDEX

Exhibit No.## 2(i)##Agreement and Plan of Merger dated as of June 19, 1998 between Berkshire and General Re Corporation. Incorporated by reference to Annex I to Registration Statement No. 333-61129 filed on Form S-4. 2(ii)##Agreement and Plan of Merger dated as of November 2, 2009 by and among Berkshire, R Acquisition Company, LLC and BNSF. Incorporated by reference to Annex A to Registration Statement No. 333-163343 on Form S-4. 2(iii)##Agreement and Plan of Merger dated August 8, 2015, by and among Berkshire, NW Merger Sub Inc. and Precision Castparts Corporation (“PCC”) Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 2.1 to PCC’s Current Report on Form 8-K filed on August 10, 2015 (SEC File No. 001-10348) 3(i)##Restated Certificate of Incorporation Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 3(i) to Form 10-K filed on March 2, 2015. 3(ii)##By-Laws Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 3(ii) to Form 8-K filed on May 10, 2023. 4.1##Indenture, dated as of December 22, 2003, between Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A. (as successor to J.P. Morgan Trust Company, National Association), as trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4.1 on Form S-4 of Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed on February 4, 2004. SEC File No. 333-112486 4.2##Indenture, dated as of February 1, 2010, among Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., as trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4.1 to Berkshire’s Registration Statement on Form S-3 filed on February 1, 2010. SEC File No. 333-164611 4.3##Indenture, dated as of January 26, 2016, by and among Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., as trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4.1 to Berkshire’s Registration Statement on Form S-3 filed on January 26, 2016. SEC File No. 333-209122 4.4##Indenture, dated as of December 1, 1995, between BNSF and The First National Bank of Chicago, as trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4 on Form S-3 of BNSF filed on February 8, 1999. 4.5##Indenture, dated as of October 4, 2002, by and between MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company and The Bank of New York, Trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4.1 to the Berkshire Hathaway Energy Company Registration Statement No. 333-101699 dated December 6, 2002. 4.6##Indenture, dated as of January 28, 2022, by and among Berkshire Hathaway Inc., as an issuer and a guarantor of the debt securities issued by Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation, as an issuer, and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., as trustee. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 4.1 to Berkshire’s Registration Statement on Form S-3 filed on January 28, 2022. SEC File No 333-262384. ##Other instruments defining the rights of holders of long-term debt of Registrant and its subsidiaries are not being filed since the total amount of securities authorized by all other such instruments does not exceed 10% of the total assets of the Registrant and its subsidiaries on a consolidated basis as of December 31, 2023. The Registrant hereby agrees to furnish to the Commission upon request a copy of any such debt instrument to which it is a party. 10.1##Equity Commitment Letter of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. with Hawk Acquisition Holding Corporation dated February 13, 2013. Incorporated by reference to Exhibit 10.1 on Form 8-K of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed on February 14, 2013. 14##Code of Ethics ##Berkshire’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics is posted on its Internet website at www.berkshirehathaway.com 21##Subsidiaries of Registrant 23##Consent of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm


BRK.A K-122

Exhibit No.## 31.1##Rule 13a—14(a)/15d-14(a) Certification 31.2##Rule 13a—14(a)/15d-14(a) Certification 32.1##Section 1350 Certification 32.2##Section 1350 Certification 95##Mine Safety Disclosures 97##Policy Relating to Recovery of Erroneously Awarded Compensation 101##The following financial information from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, formatted in iXBRL (Inline Extensible Business Reporting Language) includes: (i) the Cover Page (ii) the Consolidated Balance Sheets, (iii) the Consolidated Statements of Earnings, (iv) the Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income, (v) the Consolidated Statements of Changes in Shareholders’ Equity, (vi) the Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows, and (vii) the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements and Schedule I, tagged in summary and detail. 104##Cover Page Interactive Data File (formatted as iXBRL and contained in Exhibit 101)


BRK.A SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.


BRK.A SIGNATURES

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.


BRK.A Marc D. Hamburg Senior Vice President and Principal Financial Officer

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, this report has been signed below by the following persons on behalf of the Registrant and in the capacities and on the dates indicated. /S/ WARREN E. BUFFETT   Warren E. Buffett##Chairman of the Board of Directors—Chief Executive Officer##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ GREGORY E. ABEL   Gregory E. Abel##Director—Vice Chairman—Non-Insurance Operations##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ HOWARD G. BUFFETT   Howard G. Buffett##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ SUSAN A. BUFFETT   Susan A. Buffett##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ STEPHEN B. BURKE   Stephen B. Burke##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ KENNETH I. CHENAULT   Kenneth I. Chenault##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ CHRISTOPHER C. DAVIS   Christopher C. Davis##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ SUSAN L. DECKER   Susan L. Decker##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ CHARLOTTE GUYMAN   Charlotte Guyman##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ AJIT JAIN   Ajit Jain##Director—Vice Chairman—Insurance Operations##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ THOMAS S. MURPHY, JR.   Thomas S. Murphy, Jr.##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ RONALD L. OLSON   Ronald L. Olson##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ WALLACE R. WEITZ   Wallace R. Weitz##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ MERYL B. WITMER   Meryl B. Witmer##Director##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ MARC D. HAMBURG   Marc D. Hamburg##Senior Vice President—Principal Financial Officer##February 24, 2024 Date /S/ DANIEL J. JAKSICH   Daniel J. Jaksich##Vice President—Principal Accounting Officer##February 24, 2024 Date


BRK.A K-124


GOOGL Overview

As our founders Larry and Sergey wrote in the original founders' letter, "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." That unconventional spirit has been a driving force throughout our history, inspiring us to tackle big problems and invest in moonshots. It led us to be a pioneer in the development of AI and, since 2016, an AI-first company. We continue this work under the leadership of Alphabet and Google CEO, Sundar Pichai.


GOOGL Overview

Alphabet is a collection of businesses — the largest of which is Google. We report Google in two segments, Google Services and Google Cloud, and all non-Google businesses collectively as Other Bets. Alphabet's structure is about helping each of our businesses prosper through strong leaders and independence.


GOOGL Access and Technology for Everyone

The Internet is one of the world’s most powerful equalizers; it propels ideas, people, and businesses large and small. Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is as relevant today as it was when we were founded in 1998. Since then, we have evolved from a company that helps people find answers to a company that also helps people get things done.


We are focused on building an even more helpful Google for everyone, and we aspire to give everyone the tools they need to increase their knowledge, health, happiness, and success. Google Search helps people find information and make sense of the world in more natural and intuitive ways, with trillions of searches on Google every year. YouTube provides people with entertainment, information, and opportunities to learn something new. Google Assistant offers the best way to get things done seamlessly across different devices, providing intelligent help throughout a person's day, no matter where they are. Google Cloud helps customers solve today’s business challenges, improve productivity, reduce costs, and unlock new growth engines. We are continually innovating and building new products and features that will help our users, partners, customers, and communities and have invested more than $150 billion in research and development in the last five years in support of these efforts.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

AI is a transformational technology that can bring meaningful and positive change to people and societies across the world, and for our business. At Google, we have been bringing AI into our products and services for more than a decade and making them available to our users. Our journey began in 2001, when machine learning was first incorporated into Google Search to suggest better spellings to users searching the web. Today, AI in our products is


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

used by billions of people globally through features like autocomplete suggestions in Google Search; translation across 133 languages in Google Translate; and organization, searching, and editing in Google Photos.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

Large language models (LLMs) are an exciting aspect of our work in AI based on deep learning architectures, such as the Transformer, a neural network architecture that we introduced in 2017 that helped with language understanding. This led to the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT, in 2019 that helped Search understand the intent of user search queries better than ever before.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

Google was a company built in the cloud, and we continue to invest in our Google Cloud offerings, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, to help organizations stay at the forefront of AI innovation with our AI-optimized infrastructure, mature AI platform and world-class models, and assistive agents.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

We believe AI can solve some of the hardest societal, scientific and engineering challenges of our time. For example, in 2020, Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold system solved a 50-year-old protein folding challenge. Since then, we have open-sourced to the scientific community 200 million of AlphaFold’s protein structures which are used to work on everything from accelerating new malaria vaccines to advancing cancer drug discovery and developing plastic-eating enzymes. As another example, AI can also have a transformative effect on climate progress by providing helpful information, predicting climate-related events, and optimizing climate action. Using advanced AI and geospatial analysis, Google Research has developed flood forecasting models that can provide early warning and real-time flooding information to communities and individuals.


GOOGL Making AI Helpful for Everyone

As AI continues to improve rapidly, we are focused on giving helpful features to our users and customers as we deliver on our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. With a bold and responsible approach, we continue to take the next steps to make this technology even more helpful for everyone.


GOOGL Deliver the Most Advanced, Safe, and Responsible AI

We aim to build the most advanced, safe, and responsible AI with models that are developed, trained, and rigorously tested at scale powered by our continued investment in AI technical infrastructure. In December 2023, we launched Gemini, our most capable and general model. It was built from the ground up to be multimodal, which means it can generalize and seamlessly understand, operate across, and combine different types of information, including text, code, audio, images, and video. Our teams across Alphabet will leverage Gemini, as well as other AI models we have previously developed and announced, across our business to deliver the best product and service experiences for our users, advertisers, partners, customers, and developers.


We believe our approach to AI must be both bold and responsible. That means developing AI in a way that maximizes the positive benefits to society while addressing the challenges, guided by our AI Principles. We published these in 2018, as one of the first companies to articulate principles that put beneficial use, users, safety, and avoidance of harms above business considerations. While there is natural tension between being bold and being responsible, we believe it is possible — and in fact critical — to embrace that tension productively.


GOOGL Enable Organizations and Developers to Innovate on Google Cloud

AI is not only a powerful enabler, it is also a major platform shift. Globally, businesses from startups to large enterprises, and the public sector are thinking about how to drive transformation. That is why we are focused on making it easy and scalable for others to innovate, and grow, with AI. That means providing the most advanced computing infrastructure and expanding access to Google’s latest AI models that have been rigorously tested in our own products. Our Vertex AI platform gives developers the ability to train, tune, augment, and deploy applications using generative AI models and services such as Enterprise Search and Conversations. Duet AI for Google Cloud provides pre-packaged AI agents that assist developers to write, test, document, and operate software.


GOOGL Improve Knowledge, Learning, Creativity, and Productivity

Things that we now consider routine – like spell check, mobile check deposit, or Google Search, Google Translate, and Google Maps – all use AI. As AI continues to improve rapidly, we are focused on giving helpful features to our users as we continue to deliver on our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.


While we have been integrating AI into our products for years, we are now embedding the power of generative AI to continue helping our users express themselves and get things done. For example, Duet AI in Google Workspace helps users write, organize, visualize, accelerate workflows, and have richer meetings. Bard allows users to collaborate with experimental AI with new features that include image capabilities, coding support, and app integration. Dream Screen, a new experimental feature in YouTube, allows for the creation of AI-generated video or image backgrounds to Shorts by typing an idea into a prompt.


Alphabet Inc.


We also know businesses of all sizes around the world rely on Google Ads to find customers and grow their businesses — and we make that even easier with AI. With Performance Max, advertisers simply tell us their campaign goals and share their creative assets, and AI will automatically produce and run a highly effective ad campaign across all of Google’s properties, to meet their budget. Product Studio brings the benefits of AI to businesses of all sizes, helping them easily create uniquely-tailored imagery featuring their products — for free. Additionally, we are experimenting with Search and Shopping ads that are directly integrated into the AI-powered snapshot and conversational mode in Search Generative Experience.


GOOGL Build the Most Helpful Personal Computing Platforms and Devices

Over the years, our Pixel phones have incorporated AI compute directly into the device and built experiences on top of it. Our latest Pixel devices were built around AI, bringing the best AI-assistive experiences to our users, such as Best Take, Magic Editor, and Audio Magic Eraser. As we look ahead, we are designing our Android and Chrome operating systems with new AI-forward user experiences.


GOOGL Moonshots

Many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, making only incremental changes. This incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, where change tends to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. People thought we were crazy when we acquired YouTube and Android and when we launched Chrome, but those efforts have matured into major platforms for digital video and mobile devices and a safer, popular browser. Our early investments in AI started out as moonshots but are now incorporated into our core products and central to future developments. We continue to look toward the future and to invest for the long term, most notably for the application of AI to our products and services, as well as other frontier technologies such as quantum computing. As we said in the original founders' letter, we will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects that we believe in, as they are the key to our long-term success.


GOOGL Privacy and Security

We make it a priority to protect the privacy and security of our products, users, and customers, even if there are near-term financial consequences. We do this by continuously investing in building products that are secure by default; strictly upholding responsible data practices that emphasize privacy by design; and building easy-to-use settings that put people in control. We are continually enhancing these efforts over time, whether by enabling users to auto-delete their data, giving them tools, such as My Ad Center, to control their ad experience, or advancing anti-malware, anti-phishing, and password security features.


GOOGL Google

For reporting purposes Google comprises two segments: Google Services and Google Cloud.


GOOGL Serving Our Users

We have always been committed to building helpful products that can improve the lives of millions of people worldwide. Our product innovations are what make our services widely used, and our brand one of the most recognized in the world. Google Services' core products and platforms include ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube, with broad and growing adoption by users around the world.


GOOGL Serving Our Users

Our products and services have come a long way since the company was founded more than 25 years ago. While Google Search started as a way to find web pages, organized into ten blue links, we have driven technical advancements and product innovations that have transformed Google Search into a dynamic, multimodal experience. We first expanded from traditional desktop browsers into mobile web search, making it easier to navigate on smaller screens. As new types of content surfaced on the internet, Universal Search made it possible to search multiple content types, like news, images, videos, and more, to deliver rich, relevant results. The introduction of new search modalities, like voice and visual search, made it easier for people to express their curiosity in natural and intuitive ways. We took that a step further with multisearch, which lets people search with text and images at the same time. Large language models like BERT and Multitask Unified Models, or MUMs, have made it possible to express more natural language queries, vastly improving the quality of results. Each advancement has made it easier and more natural for people to find what they are looking for.


GOOGL Serving Our Users

This drive to make information more accessible and helpful has led us over the years to improve the discovery and creation of digital content both on the web and through platforms like Google Play and YouTube. People are consuming many forms of digital content, including watching videos, streaming TV, playing games, listening to music,


GOOGL Serving Our Users


GOOGL Serving Our Users

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Serving Our Users

reading books, and using apps. Working with content creators and partners, we continue to build new ways for people around the world to create and find great digital content.


GOOGL Serving Our Users

Fueling all of these great digital experiences are extraordinary platforms and devices. That is why we continue to invest in platforms like our Android mobile operating system, Chrome browser, and Chrome operating system, as well as growing our family of devices. We see tremendous potential for devices to be helpful and make people's lives easier by combining the best of our AI, software, and hardware. This potential is reflected in our latest generation of devices, such as the new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, and the Pixel Watch 2. Creating products and services that people rely on every day is a journey that we are investing in for the long-term.


GOOGL How We Make Money

We have built world-class advertising technologies for advertisers, agencies, and publishers to power their digital marketing businesses. Our advertising solutions help millions of companies grow their businesses through our wide range of products across devices and formats, and we aim to ensure positive user experiences by serving the right ads at the right time and by building deep partnerships with brands and agencies. AI has been foundational to our advertising business for more than a decade. Products like Performance Max and Product Studio use the full power of our AI to help advertisers find untapped and incremental conversion opportunities.


GOOGL How We Make Money

Google Services generates revenues primarily by delivering both performance and brand advertising that appears on Google Search & other properties, YouTube, and Google Network partners' properties ("Google Network properties"). We continue to invest in both performance and brand advertising and seek to improve the measurability of advertising so advertisers understand the effectiveness of their campaigns. •Performance advertising creates and delivers relevant ads that users will click on leading to direct engagement with advertisers. Performance advertising lets our advertisers connect with users while driving measurable results. Our ads tools allow performance advertisers to create simple text-based ads. •Brand advertising helps enhance users' awareness of and affinity for advertisers' products and services, through videos, text, images, and other interactive ads that run across various devices. We help brand advertisers deliver digital videos and other types of ads to specific audiences for their brand-building marketing campaigns.


GOOGL How We Make Money

We have allocated substantial resources to stopping bad advertising practices and protecting users on the web. We focus on creating the best advertising experiences for our users and advertisers in many ways, including filtering out invalid traffic, removing billions of bad ads from our systems every year, and closely monitoring the sites, apps, and videos where ads appear and blocklisting them when necessary to ensure that ads do not fund bad content.


GOOGL How We Make Money

In addition, Google Services increasingly generates revenues from products and services beyond advertising, including: •consumer subscriptions, which primarily include revenues from YouTube services, such as YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, and NFL Sunday Ticket, as well as Google One; •platforms, which primarily include revenues from Google Play from the sales of apps and in-app purchases; and •devices, which primarily include sales of the Pixel family of devices.


GOOGL Google Cloud

Through our Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace offerings, Google Cloud generates revenues primarily from consumption-based fees and subscriptions for infrastructure, platform, collaboration tools and other cloud services. Customers use five key capabilities from Google Cloud. •AI-optimized Infrastructure: provides open, reliable, and scalable compute, networking, and storage to enable customers to run workloads anywhere — on our Cloud, at the edge, or in their data centers. It can be used to migrate and modernize IT systems and to train and serve various types of AI models. •Cybersecurity: helps customers detect, protect, and respond to a broad range of cybersecurity threats, with AI integrated to further strengthen security outcomes, prioritize which threats to investigate, and identify attack paths, as well as accelerate resolution of cybersecurity threats. •Databases and Analytics: provides a variety of different types of databases — relational, key-value, in-memory — to store and manage data for different types of applications. Our Data Cloud also unifies data lakes, data warehouses, data governance, and advanced machine learning into a single platform that can analyze data across any cloud.


GOOGL Google Cloud


GOOGL Google Cloud

Alphabet Inc. •Collaboration Tools: Google Workspace and Duet AI in Google Workspace provide easy-to-use, secure communication and collaboration tools, including apps like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and more. These tools enable secure hybrid and remote work, boosting productivity and collaboration. AI has been used in Google Workspace for years to improve grammar, efficiency, security, and more with features like Smart Reply, Smart Compose, and malware and phishing protection in Gmail. Duet AI in Google Workspace helps users write, organize, visualize, accelerate workflows, and have richer meetings. •AI Platform and Duet AI for Google Cloud: Our Vertex AI platform gives developers the ability to train, tune, augment, and deploy applications using generative AI models and services such as Enterprise Search and Conversations. Duet AI for Google Cloud provides pre-packaged AI agents that assist developers to write, test, document, and operate software.


GOOGL Other Bets

Across Alphabet, we are also using technology to try to solve big problems that affect a wide variety of industries from improving transportation and health technology to exploring solutions to address climate change. Alphabet’s investment in the portfolio of Other Bets includes businesses that are at various stages of development, ranging from those in the R&D phase to those that are in the beginning stages of commercialization. Our goal is for them to become thriving, successful businesses. Other Bets operate as independent companies and some of them have their own boards with independent members and outside investors. While these early-stage businesses naturally come with considerable uncertainty, some of them are already generating revenue and making important strides in their industries. Revenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of healthcare-related services and internet services.


GOOGL Competition

Our business is characterized by rapid change as well as new and disruptive technologies. We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, including, among others, from: •general purpose search engines and information services; •vertical search engines and e-commerce providers for queries related to travel, jobs, and health, which users may navigate directly to rather than go through Google; •online advertising platforms and networks; •other forms of advertising, such as billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio, and television as our advertisers typically advertise in multiple media, both online and offline; •digital content and application platform providers; •providers of enterprise cloud services; •developers and providers of AI products and services; •companies that design, manufacture, and market consumer hardware products, including businesses that have developed proprietary platforms; •providers of digital video services; •social networks, which users may rely on for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines; •providers of workspace communication and connectivity products; and •digital assistant providers.


GOOGL Competition

Competing successfully depends heavily on our ability to develop and distribute innovative products and technologies to the marketplace across our businesses. For example, for advertising, competing successfully depends on attracting and retaining: •users, for whom other products and services are literally one click away, largely on the basis of the relevance of our advertising, as well as the general usefulness, security, and availability of our products and services; •advertisers, primarily based on our ability to generate sales leads, and ultimately customers, and to deliver their advertisements in an efficient and effective manner across a variety of distribution channels; and •content providers, primarily based on the quality of our advertiser base, our ability to help these partners generate revenues from advertising, and the terms of our agreements with them.


GOOGL Competition


GOOGL Competition

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Competition

For additional information about competition, see Item 1A Risk Factors of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.


GOOGL Ongoing Commitment to Sustainability

We believe that every business has the opportunity and obligation to protect our planet. Sustainability is one of our core values at Google, and we strive to build sustainability into everything we do. We have been a leader on sustainability and climate change since Google’s founding more than 25 years ago.


Our sustainability work is focused on empowering individuals to take action, working together with our partners and customers, and working to reduce our carbon footprint across our operations and supply chain.


In 2020, we shared our aspiration to help individuals, cities, and other partners collectively reduce one gigaton of their carbon equivalent emissions annually by 2030. This is an ambitious vision that we have set to push us to contribute meaningfully to helping with climate solutions beyond our own operations and value chain.


In 2021, we set an ambitious goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain, by 2030. To accomplish this, we aim to reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, Scope 2 (market-based), and Scope 3 absolute emissions (versus our 2019 baseline) before 2030, and plan to invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our remaining emissions. We have formally committed to the Science Based Targets initiative to seek their validation of our absolute emissions reduction target.


One of the key levers for reducing emissions from our operations is transitioning to clean energy. Since 2017, we have matched 100% of the electricity consumption of our global operations with purchases of renewable energy on an annual basis. However, because of differences in the availability of renewable energy sources like solar and wind across the regions where we operate—and because of the variable supply of these resources—we still need to rely on carbon-emitting energy sources that power local grids. That is why we set a goal to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) on every grid where we operate by 2030.


Achieving net-zero emissions and 24/7 CFE by 2030 are extremely ambitious goals. We also know that our path to net-zero emissions will not be easy or linear. Some of our plans may take years to deliver results, particularly where they involve building new large-scale infrastructure with long lead times. So as our business continues to evolve, we expect our emissions to rise before dropping towards our absolute emissions reduction target.


To benefit the people and places where we operate, we have set goals to replenish 120% of the freshwater volume we consume, on average, across our offices and data centers by 2030 and to help restore and improve the quality of water and health of ecosystems in the communities where we operate.


We also aim to maximize the reuse of finite resources across our operations, products, and supply chains. Our circularity principles focus on designing out waste from the start, keeping materials in use for as long as possible, and promoting healthy materials—for our data centers, workplaces, and products.


More information on our approach to sustainability can be found in our annual sustainability reports, including Google’s Environmental Report. The contents of our sustainability reports are not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC. For additional information about risks and uncertainties applicable to our commitments to attain certain sustainability goals, see Item 1A Risk Factors of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

We are a company of curious, talented, and passionate people. We embrace collaboration and creativity, and encourage the iteration of ideas to address complex challenges in technology and society.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

Our people are critical for our continued success, so we work hard to create an environment where employees can have fulfilling careers, and be happy, healthy, and productive. We offer industry-leading benefits and programs to take care of the diverse needs of our employees and their families, including opportunities for career growth and development, resources to support their financial health, and access to excellent healthcare choices. Our competitive compensation programs help us to attract and retain top candidates, and we will continue to invest in recruiting talented people to technical and non-technical roles, and rewarding them well. We provide a variety of high quality training and support to managers to build and strengthen their capabilities-–ranging from courses for new managers, to learning resources that help them provide feedback and manage performance, to coaching and individual support.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

At Alphabet, we are committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve. More information on Google’s approach to diversity can be found in our annual diversity reports, available publicly at diversity.google. The contents of our diversity reports are not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

As of December 31, 2023, Alphabet had 182,502 employees. We have work councils and statutory employee representation obligations in certain countries, and we are committed to supporting protected labor rights, maintaining an open culture, and listening to all employees. Supporting healthy and open dialogue is central to how we work, and we communicate information about the company through multiple internal channels to our employees.


GOOGL Culture and Workforce

When necessary we contract with businesses around the world to provide specialized services where we do not have appropriate in-house expertise or resources, often in fields that require specialized training like cafe operations, content moderation, customer support, and physical security. We also contract with temporary staffing agencies when we need to cover short-term leaves, when we have spikes in business needs, or when we need to quickly incubate special projects. We choose our partners and staffing agencies carefully, and review their compliance with Google’s Supplier Code of Conduct. We continually make improvements to promote a respectful and positive working environment for everyone — employees, vendors, and temporary staff alike.


GOOGL Government Regulation

We are subject to numerous United States (U.S.) federal, state, and local, as well as foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subjects, and the scope of this coverage continues to broaden with continuing new legal and regulatory developments in the U.S. and internationally. Like other companies in the technology industry, we face increasingly heightened scrutiny from both U.S. and foreign governments with respect to our compliance with laws and regulations. Many of these laws and regulations are evolving and their applicability and scope, as interpreted by the courts, remain uncertain. Particularly with regard to AI; climate change and sustainability; competition; consumer protection; content moderation; data privacy and security; news publications; and reporting on human capital and diversity, we have seen an increase in new and evolving laws and regulations, as well as related enforcement actions and investigations, being proposed and implemented in recent years by legislative and regulatory bodies around the world.


GOOGL Government Regulation

Our compliance with these laws and regulations may be onerous and could, individually or in the aggregate, increase our cost of doing business, make our products and services less useful, limit our ability to pursue certain business models, cause us to change our business practices, affect our competitive position relative to our peers, and/or otherwise harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Government Regulation

For additional information about government regulation applicable to our business, see Item 1A Risk Factors; Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect in Part II, Item 7; and Legal Matters in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.


GOOGL Intellectual Property

We rely on various intellectual property laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary technology and our brand. We have registered, and applied for the registration of, U.S. and international trademarks, service marks, domain names, and copyrights. We have also filed patent applications in the U.S. and foreign countries covering certain of our technology, and acquired patent assets to supplement our portfolio. We have licensed in the past, and expect that we may license in the future, certain of our rights to other parties. For additional information, see Item 1A Risk Factors of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.


GOOGL Available Information

Our website is located at www.abc.xyz, and our investor relations website is located at www.abc.xyz/investor. Access to our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and our Proxy Statements, and any amendments to these reports, is available on our investor relations website, free of charge, after we file or furnish them with the SEC and they are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.


GOOGL Available Information

We webcast via our investor relations website our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community. Our investor relations website also provides notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance and other items that may be material or of interest to our investors, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases, and blogs. We also share Google news and product updates on Google's Keyword blog at https://www.blog.google/, which may be of interest or material to our investors. Further, corporate governance information, including our certificate of incorporation, bylaws, governance guidelines, board committee charters, and code of conduct, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading "Governance." The content of our websites are not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.


GOOGL Available Information


GOOGL Available Information

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL FACTORS

Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described below, which could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results, and affect the trading price of our Class A and Class C stock.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We generate a significant portion of our revenues from advertising. Reduced spending by advertisers, a loss of partners, or new and existing technologies that block ads online and/or affect our ability to customize ads could harm our business.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We generated more than 75% of total revenues from online advertising in 2023. Many of our advertisers, companies that distribute our products and services, digital publishers, and content providers can terminate their contracts with us at any time. These partners may not continue to do business with us if we do not create more value (such as increased numbers of users or customers, new sales leads, increased brand awareness, or more effective monetization) than their available alternatives. Changes to our advertising policies and data privacy practices, such as our initiatives to phase out third-party cookies, as well as changes to other companies’ advertising and/or data privacy practices have in the past, and may in the future, affect the advertising that we are able to provide. In addition, technologies have been developed that make customized ads more difficult, or that block the display of ads altogether, and some providers of online services have integrated these technologies that could potentially impair the availability and functionality of third-party digital advertising. Failing to provide superior value or deliver advertisements effectively and competitively could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

In addition, expenditures by advertisers tend to correlate with overall economic conditions. Adverse macroeconomic conditions have affected, and may in the future affect, the demand for advertising, resulting in fluctuations in the amounts our advertisers spend on advertising, which could harm our financial condition and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We face intense competition. If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, customers, and other partners, we may not remain competitive, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our business environment is rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Our businesses face changing technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of rival products and services. To compete successfully, we must accurately anticipate technology developments and deliver innovative, relevant and useful products, services, and technologies in a timely manner. As our businesses evolve, the competitive pressure to innovate will encompass a wider range of products and services. We must continue to invest significant resources in technical infrastructure and R&D, including through acquisitions, in order to enhance our technology, products, and services.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We have many competitors in different industries. Our current and potential domestic and international competitors range from large and established companies to emerging start-ups. Some competitors have longer operating histories and well-established relationships in various sectors. They can use their experience and resources in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by making acquisitions and entering into other strategic arrangements; continuing to invest heavily in technical infrastructure, R&D, and in talent; initiating intellectual property and competition claims (whether or not meritorious); and continuing to compete for users, advertisers, customers, and content providers. Further, discrepancies in enforcement of existing laws may enable our lesser known competitors to aggressively interpret those laws without commensurate scrutiny, thereby affording them competitive advantages. Our competitors may also be able to innovate and provide products and services faster than we can or may foresee the need for products and services before we do.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We are expanding our investment in AI across the entire company. This includes generative AI and continuing to integrate AI capabilities into our products and services. AI technology and services are highly competitive, rapidly evolving, and require significant investment, including development and operational costs, to meet the changing needs and expectations of our existing users and attract new users. Our ability to deploy certain AI technologies critical for our products and services and for our business strategy may depend on the availability and pricing of third-party equipment and technical infrastructure. Additionally, other companies may develop AI products and technologies that are similar or superior to our technologies or more cost-effective to deploy. Other companies may also have (or in the future may obtain) patents or other proprietary rights that would prevent, limit, or interfere with our ability to make, use, or sell our own AI products and services.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our financial condition and operating results may also suffer if our products and services are not responsive to the evolving needs and desires of our users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers. As new and existing technologies continue to develop, competitors and new entrants may be able to offer experiences that are, or


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

that are seen to be, substantially similar to or better than ours. These technologies could reduce usage of our products and services, and force us to compete in different ways and expend significant resources to develop and operate equal or better products and services. Competitors’ success in providing compelling products and services or in attracting and retaining users, advertisers, publishers, customers, and content providers could harm our financial condition and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our ongoing 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We have invested and expect to continue to invest 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 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, and content providers. 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. Innovations in our products and services could also result in changes to user 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Within Google Services, we continue to invest heavily 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

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. We are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services, invest in cybersecurity, and hire talent, particularly to support and scale our sales force. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services. Pricing and delivery models are competitive and constantly evolving, and we may not attain sufficient scale and profitability to achieve our business objectives. Further, our business with 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/or 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Within Other Bets, we are investing significantly in the areas of health, life sciences, and transportation, 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

In addition, new and evolving products and services, including those that use AI, raise ethical, technological, legal, regulatory, and other challenges, which may negatively affect 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.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our revenue growth rate could decline over time, and we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our revenue growth rate could decline over time as a result of a number of factors, including changes in the devices and modalities used to access our products and services; changes in geographic mix; deceleration or declines in advertiser spending; competition; customer usage and demand for our products; decreases in our pricing of our products and services; ongoing product and policy changes; and shifts to lower priced products and services.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

In addition, we may experience downward pressure on our operating margin resulting from a variety of factors, such as an increase in the mix of lower-margin products and services, in particular from the continued expansion of our business into new fields, including products and services such as our devices, Google Cloud, and consumer subscription products, as well as significant investments in Other Bets, all of which may have margins lower than those we generate from advertising. In particular, margins on our devices have had, and may continue to have, an adverse effect on our consolidated margins due to pressures on pricing and higher cost of sales. We may also experience


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

downward pressure on our operating margins from increasing regulations, increasing competition, and increasing costs for many aspects of our business. Further, certain of our costs and expenses are generally less variable in nature and may not correlate to changes in revenue. We may also not be able to execute our efforts to re-engineer our cost base successfully or in a timely manner. Due to these factors and the evolving nature of our business, our historical revenue growth rate and historical operating margin may not be indicative of our future performance. For additional information, see Trends in Our Business and Financial Effect and Revenues and Monetization Metrics in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and any inability to protect them could reduce the value of our products, services, and brands as well as affect our ability to compete.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights are important assets for us. Various events outside of our control pose a threat to our intellectual property rights, as well as to our products, services, and technologies. For example, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are distributed or made available through the Internet. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be sufficient or effective. Although we seek to obtain patent protection for our innovations, it is possible we may not be able to protect some of these innovations. Moreover, we may not have adequate patent or copyright protection for certain innovations that later turn out to be important. There is always the possibility that the scope of the protection gained will be insufficient or that an issued patent may be deemed invalid or unenforceable.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We also seek to maintain certain intellectual property as trade secrets. The secrecy of such trade secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised, which could cause us to lose the competitive advantage resulting from these trade secrets. We also face risks associated with our trademarks. For example, there is a risk that the word “Google” could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word “search.” Some courts have ruled that "Google" is a protectable trademark, but it is possible that other courts, particularly those outside of the U.S., may reach a different determination. If this happens, we could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word “Google” to refer to their own products, thus diminishing our brand.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business and our ability to compete. Also, protecting our intellectual property rights is costly and time consuming. Any increase in the unauthorized use of our intellectual property could make it more expensive to do business and harm our financial condition and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our business depends on strong brands, and failing to maintain and enhance our brands would hurt our ability to expand our base of users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our strong brands have significantly contributed to the success of our business. Maintaining and enhancing the brands within Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets increases our ability to enter new categories and launch new and innovative products and services that better serve the needs of our users, advertisers, customers, content providers, and other partners. Our brands have been, and may in the future be, negatively affected by a number of factors, including, among others, reputational issues, third-party content shared on our platforms, data privacy and security issues and developments, and product or technical performance failures. For example, if we fail to respond appropriately to the sharing of misinformation or objectionable content on our services and/or products or objectionable practices by advertisers, or otherwise to adequately address user concerns, our users may lose confidence in our brands.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Furthermore, failure to maintain and enhance our brands could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. Our success will depend largely on our ability to remain a technology leader and continue to provide high-quality, trustworthy, innovative products and services that are truly useful and play a valuable role in a range of settings.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We face a number of manufacturing and supply chain risks that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We face a number of risks related to manufacturing and supply chain management, which could affect our ability to supply both our products and our services.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We rely on contract manufacturers to manufacture or assemble our devices and servers and networking equipment used in our technical infrastructure, and we may supply the contract manufacturers with components to assemble the devices and equipment. We also rely on other companies to participate in the supply of components and distribution of our products and services. Our business could be negatively affected if we are not able to engage these companies with the necessary capabilities or capacity on reasonable terms, or if those we engage fail to meet their


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Alphabet Inc.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

obligations (whether due to financial difficulties or other reasons), or make adverse changes in the pricing or other material terms of our arrangements with them.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We have experienced and/or may in the future experience supply shortages, price increases, quality issues, and/or longer lead times that could negatively affect our operations, driven by raw material, component availability, manufacturing capacity, labor shortages, industry allocations, logistics capacity, inflation, foreign currency exchange rates, tariffs, sanctions and export controls, trade disputes and barriers, forced labor concerns, sustainability sourcing requirements, geopolitical tensions, armed conflicts, natural disasters or pandemics, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power loss, and significant changes in the financial or business condition of our suppliers. Some of the components we use in our technical infrastructure and our devices are available from only one or limited sources, and we may not be able to find replacement vendors on favorable terms in the event of a supply chain disruption. A significant supply interruption that affects us or our vendors could delay critical data center upgrades or expansions and delay consumer product availability.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We may enter into long-term contracts for materials and products that commit us to significant terms and conditions. We may face costs for materials and products that are not consumed due to market demand, technological change, changed consumer preferences, quality, product recalls, and warranty issues. For instance, because certain of our hardware supply contracts have volume-based pricing or minimum purchase requirements, if the volume of sales of our devices decreases or does not reach projected targets, we could face increased materials and manufacturing costs or other financial liabilities that could make our products more costly per unit to manufacture and harm our financial condition and operating results. Furthermore, certain of our competitors may negotiate more favorable contractual terms based on volume and other commitments that may provide them with competitive advantages and may affect our supply.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our devices have had, and in the future may have, quality issues resulting from design, manufacturing, or operations. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by components we purchase from other manufacturers or suppliers. If the quality of our products and services does not meet expectations or our products or services are defective or require a recall, it could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

We require our suppliers and business partners to comply with laws and, where applicable, our company policies and practices, such as the Google Supplier Code of Conduct, regarding workplace and employment practices, data security, environmental compliance, and intellectual property licensing, but we do not control them or their practices. Violations of law or unethical business practices could result in supply chain disruptions, canceled orders, harm to key relationships, and damage to our reputation. Their failure to procure necessary license rights to intellectual property could affect our ability to sell our products or services and expose us to litigation or financial claims.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Interruption to, interference with, or failure of our complex information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer contracts depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Our systems are vulnerable to damage, interference, or interruption from modifications or upgrades, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored attacks, natural disasters or pandemics, geopolitical tensions or armed conflicts, export controls and sanctions, the effects of climate change (such as sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and resultant air quality effects and power shutdowns associated with wildfire prevention, and increased storm severity), power loss, utility outages, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, software bugs, ransomware attacks, supply-chain attacks, computer denial of service attacks, phishing schemes, or other attempts to harm or access our systems. Some of our data centers are located in areas with a high risk of major earthquakes or other natural disasters. Our data centers are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, and intentional acts of vandalism, and, in some cases, to potential disruptions resulting from problems experienced by facility operators or disruptions as a result of geopolitical tensions and conflicts happening in the area. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of a natural disaster or pandemic, closure of a facility, or other unanticipated problems affecting our data centers could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. In addition, our products and services are highly technical and complex and have contained in the past, and may contain in the future, errors or vulnerabilities, which could result in interruptions in or failure of our services or systems. Any of these incidents could impede or prevent us from effectively offering products and providing services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, and operating results.


GOOGL Risks Specific to our Company

Our international operations expose us to additional risks that could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.