Over the weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced a minor revolt when he gave his commencement speech at Stanford University, where he earned his graduate degree in materials science and engineering. Around 200 students from the class reportedly He left, while others loudly booed the technology executive.
The focus of the protest was Google’s defense ties, including Project Nimbus, the controversial $1.2 billion contract, shared with Amazon, to provide cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli military, as well as their relationship with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The students’ signs included phrases such as “ICE SPIES WITH GOOGLE AI” and “GENOCIDE ON GOOGLE,” as well as “FREE PALESTINE,” a press release associated with the protest notes. The students also waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine.” online video of protest shows.
“We stand down because we refuse to glorify the corporations that fuel this violence and wield our power to choose differently,” read a statement associated with the protest.
The strike was organized by several campus activist groups, including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid, and Tech for Liberation. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.
As the war in Gaza continues, Google’s involvement in Nimbus has sparked protests from both inside and outside the company. In 2024, Google laid off 28 workers for protesting against the contract, although he has continued suffer internal dissent on the subject since then. It was also recently criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who accused him and other companies to “choose to turn a blind eye” to Israel’s use of their services.
Project Nimbus is also supported by Amazon. Microsoft has also been criticized for its support of the Israeli army, although the company restricted use by the Israeli government of its technology after an investigation discovered that its cloud services were being used for mass surveillance of Palestinians.
The student protest also drew criticism from business leaders online. Vinod Khosla, the billionaire co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, published in X that the protest was “biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish,” adding that it was selfish because the students “ignored the 3 billion poorest people on this planet who could benefit from AI and are worried about their uninformed selfish interest.”
Pichai’s appearance at Stanford is part of a larger pattern. Speakers at college graduation ceremonies across the country have faced boos when they tried to get outgoing college students excited about AI. But rarely has student animosity been as directed as it was with Pichai, directed not at the AI hype, but at the specific business decisions made by the company he runs. In general, young people seem to believe that AI is threatening your job opportunities and may also be ruining other sectors of society.
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