Yuko Noguchi – GC Powerlist
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Japan 2025

Information technology

Yuko Noguchi

Head of legal Japan, director | Google Japan

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Japan 2025

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Yuko Noguchi

Head of legal Japan, director | Google Japan

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

We advise lots of cutting-edge issues, primarily about the Japanese law, but in coordination with the global team for the consistency and cross-jurisdictional influence on/from other jurisdictions that touch all the products we cover. The products are Search, Gemini (our AI tool), YouTube, Cloud, Map, Gmail, Photo, Ads, Pixel, Payment, among other things. Legal topics also vary, including data and privacy, content, copyright, competition, contract, and all the other specialised laws around payment, marketing, consumer protection, health, hardware, labour law etc. Given the popularity and influence of Google’s products in people’s lives, our services and products are under heightened scrutiny by the government authorities, and international authorities are looking at similar issues and giving influence to one another. Thus, it is crucial for us to understand the local law, as well as other jurisdictions’ decisions and developments. Especially in the last two to three years, the emergence of AI technologies has been a crucial part of our work – navigating novel issues around AI in close collaboration with the Product and Public Policy team and also in close discussion with our partners. Implementation negotiation around the Smartphone Act, a new competition law that regulates Operating system owners, has been a true cross-team effort within Google as well as with the regulators.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Two things are key to our success. Representing Japan well in the complex matrix of global risk-taking decisions within Google is always an important aspect of our job, given legal and cultural differences in regulation and business and evolving sentiments within our country. Explaining our efforts, responsibility and positions externally to regulators and our partners is another important aspect of our job. In the time of change and instability, things can change in many aspects – being flexible and open-minded, deciding what we can change and what we need to adopt, and maintaining close communication with stakeholders internally and externally is key to navigate the time of change. As the general counsel for Japan, making sure I support the well-being and motivation of my team members is another important aspect of my job. Here, I bring forward transparency and empathy in my daily work.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

I am passionate about making the relationship positive between people/society and technology/data. As the tools become more powerful, they have tremendous potential to make people’s lives/society better (make decisions smarter and more sustainable, etc.), but with a larger impact of risks, too. Being part of the overall efforts to make it right and positive for the future generation is an important cause that motivates me.

Looking forward, what trends do you foresee in the legal landscape over the next five to ten years that companies should prepare for?

Given the rapid development of AI tools, they will change the way we work across the company, and legal is no exception. How to do preliminary research on any legal topic, how to save time on routine tasks using AI vs how to focus our energies on essential works that benefit human intelligence will be a key theme. Given the level of accuracy the AI is reaching these days, I believe the risk of inaccuracy or hallucination will become significantly low in the near future and will be almost negligible in the next five to ten years. Thus, legal team members will increasingly focus on connecting different dots and respond to uncertainties – regulatory landscape, business directions, partners’ thinking – that are emerging and not (yet) in the AI system, to assist the leadership make the right decision.

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