Last weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced a small uprising when he gave a commencement speech at Stanford University, where he earned a graduate degree in materials science and engineering. About 200 graduates reportedly walked out, while other students loudly booed the tech executives.
The protests focused on Google’s defense relationships, including Project Nimbus, a controversial $1.2 billion contract with Amazon to provide cloud and AI services to the Israeli military, and its relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The student signs included phrases such as “ICE SPIES WITH GOOGLE AI” and “GENOCIDE RUNS ON GOOGLE,” as well as phrases such as “FREE FREE PALESTINE,” a press release related to the protest. Online videos of the protest showed students waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Liberate Palestine”.
“We stand back because we refuse to glorify the companies that incite this violence and exercise their power to make different choices,” a statement related to the protests read.
The walkout was organized by a number of campus activist groups, including Stanford Students for Palestine Justice, No Technology for Apartheid, and Technology for Liberation. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.
As the conflict in Gaza escalates, Google’s participation in Nimbus has sparked protests both inside and outside the company. In 2024, Google fired 28 employees for protesting the contract, and internal dissent over the issue has continued ever since. It has recently been criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has accused it and other companies of “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s use of its services.
Project Nimbus also receives support from Amazon. Microsoft has also been criticized for supporting the Israeli military, but after an investigation found its cloud services were being used for mass surveillance of Palestinians, the company restricted the Israeli government’s use of the technology.
The student movement 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, wrote in a post on X that the protests are “biased, stupid, short-sighted, and deeply selfish,” adding that they are selfish because the students “ignore the bottom 3 billion people on the planet who could potentially benefit from AI, and are concerned about their misinformed self-interest.”
Mr. Pichai’s attendance at Stanford University is part of a broader pattern. Speakers at university graduation ceremonies across the country are facing boos as they try to get gregarious college students excited about AI. But rarely has student hostility been as targeted as Pichai’s, and directed not at AI hype but at specific business decisions made by the company he leads. In general, young people seem to believe that AI threatens their employment opportunities and may disrupt other parts of society as well.
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