Google chief executive Sundar Pichai was met with boos and a walkout by approximately 200 graduating students when he delivered the commencement address at Stanford University over the weekend, as protests over the company's defence contracts and ties to US immigration enforcement followed him to his alma mater.
The focus of the protest was Google's defence ties, including Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract shared with Amazon to provide cloud and AI services to the Israeli military, as well as its relationship with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Student signs included phrases such as "ICE spies with Google AI" and "Genocide runs on Google," while others waved Palestinian flags and chanted "Free Palestine." "We are walking out because we refuse to glorify the corporations that fuel this violence and exercise our power to choose differently," a statement associated with the protest read.
The walkout was organised by a number of campus activist groups, including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid, and Tech for Liberation. Pichai completed his master's degree in materials science and engineering at Stanford before going on to join Google, where he has served as chief executive since 2015.
The protest drew sharp criticism from some business leaders. Vinod Khosla, the billionaire co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said on X that the protest was "biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish," adding that the students "ignored the bottom three billion people on this planet that could benefit from AI."
As the war in Gaza has continued, Google's participation in Project Nimbus has drawn protests from both inside and outside the company. In 2024, Google dismissed 28 workers for protesting the contract and has continued to face internal dissent over the issue since. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also recently accused Google and other companies of "choosing to look the other way" on Israel's use of their services.
Project Nimbus also has the backing of Amazon. Microsoft has faced similar criticism over its support for the Israeli military, though the company restricted the Israeli government's use of its technology after an investigation found that its cloud services had been used to mass-surveil Palestinians.
