This is a really fascinating in-depth article about the people who rate google rankings.  These people generally work from home, but only work for Google rankings system.  They have done this for years, but are considered "contractors" not "employees" even though all of their work comes from Google.  Therefore, they get no employee benefits.

I keep thinking...wasn't there a lawsuit with Microsoft doing the same thing:  having people work as "contractors" for years on end so they wouldn't get company benefits like stock options? 

Quote"One of the biggest mysteries for raters at Leapforce is who they actually work for. They get paychecks from Leapforce, but their work all seems to take place via Google's Raterhub service. "

...

The wrinkle in the Leapforce situation is that the company isn't depriving employees of benefits they already had, since the raters have been contract workers. But Google does provide its employees with benefits. If a court found that these raters were joint employees of Google, the search company might find itself in a tough spot.

Palefsky pointed out that courts are increasingly finding in favor of the idea that employers can be jointly liable. This opinion was shared by attorney Maring. "Historically, you had one employer and that was all that the IRS would recognize," she said. "The concept that there might be more than one common-law employer is more accepted [now]."

The article goes on to say that MUCH of the google algo is done by humans and not AI as Google likes to brag about...

QuoteRoberts believes that big companies like Google want to keep raters hidden, largely because they like to boast about how many tasks they handle with AI. "Actually their AIs are people in the Philippines," she told Ars by phone. "Are there algorithms in all these tasks? Sure. Is it 100 percent? Not even close. There's some kind of profit motive behind these claims [about how] machines and algorithms run the show."

...

"The equation is one where platforms [like Google] get all the rewards, but no responsibility, and that's out of balance," she said. Roberts also questioned why companies and users want to believe that "very human processes" like rating and moderation are being done by AI. "Civil society needs to ask why that is somehow an attractive selling point," she said. "Whatever algorithms and AI exist, humans are responsible for them and humans imbue them with value systems."

https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-raters/

A friend who worked at G for some time but is no longer there writes:

"I saw that article, but haven't gotten the inside word about it. I know that it's a complicated situation; my guess is that Google wanted to make sure that Leapforce has the responsibility for the raters that it employs. But I don't have any kind of inside word."