Google At Risk Of Losing $1B AT&T Business Over YouTube Hate Speech Video

Already facing the wrath of EU brands over the appearance of their ads on hateful content on YouTube, Google now has to contend with the decision by AT&T and Verizon to pull their ads as well. Considering that AT&T is the single biggest spender in ads in the US, the search engine company certainly has a lot to lose. Google had already implemented some changes to how the ads are distributed, but the major brands are holding their cards back for now.

Ad revenue makes up the vast majority of Google’s earnings, with 2016 seeing a whopping $79.4 billion in revenue, Bloomberg reports. This number comes from a variety of brands wanting to expose the hundreds of millions of users on both its search engine and YouTube platforms to their products and services.

However, these major companies also have conditions when it comes to where their ads should be shown and hate speech videos are certainly not among them. Verizon and AT&T are particularly averse to being tied to offensive content thanks to the predominantly progressive consumer base that it has.

“We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate,” an AT&T spokesperson. “Until Google can ensure this won’t happen again, we are removing our ads from Google’s non-search platforms.”

A spokesperson from Verizon also assured that the company took immediate action to suspend its advertising deal with Google once it found it that their ads were showing up on so-called “non-sanctioned websites.” This decision by the two carriers puts them on the same list as companies like Audi, McDonald’s, and Toyota, The Verge reports.

It’s likely that the Google will fix this issue in short order, at which point, the companies will start dealing with the tech giant again. Considering that AT&T spent about $941.96 billion in ads last year in the US, it would certainly be a huge loss for Google if it doesn’t.