Google[1] is willing to pay more tax globally, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of the largest business unit of Alphabet[2], said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"We are happy to pay more tax, whatever the world agrees to," Pichai said, noting that the company's current blended global tax rate is 20 percent. But he said the question was where Google should pay.
Critics have accused large USÂ technology companies like Google of paying too little tax outside the US, despite deriving a large portion of their revenue from these other countries.
Pichai said that as Google hired more engineers globally -- for instance, in France, where Google said this week that it would add more engineering and research staff -- it would equalise the distribution of its tax payments across different countries.
In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab, Pichai touched on a number of other hot-button subjects, from anti-trust complaints about Google to extremist content on its YouTube[3] service.
In responding to questions about the European Commission's decision last year to fine Google EUR 2.4 billion ($3 billion or roughly Rs. 19,000 crores) for abusing its dominant market position in search, Pichai said the company believed its service had benefited consumers.
"Even when you put the user first there can be winners and losers," he said. "But we are confident the product we have benefits the consumers in Europe and that is what we have tried to emphasise."
Asked about whether social media companies, including Google's YouTube, should decide what content constitutes extremism or hate speech, Pichai said he did not think internet giants should be turned into the de facto arbiters.
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