Anti-Google protestors are barking up the wrong bus stop

A few years back, disguised as an objective member of the press, I inveigled a tour of Microsoft during one of its secret bacchanalian orgies/press events. That place still haunts me. It’s built like an Ivy League college campus so that sellout academics won’t suffer the ill effects of a culture change, yet a mall in the middle hosts restaurants and luxury shops. Inside the 150-plus office buildings, you’ll find the ubiquitous lounge chairs, pool halls, and Ping-Pong tables.

During my illicit visit, I viewed a spectacle that’s popped up on recent protest agendas. Microsoft has a private bus system called the Connector to ferry employees from all over the greater Seattle area and Gatesian dukedom to its Redmond offices. Microsoftees can park their cars and ride to work in customized Greyhound-sized buses with comfy seats and free Wi-Fi, for that crucial 40-minute head start building security vulnerabilities exploitable by the NSA.

I asked if they serve free coffee on those yuppie yachts like they do everywhere else. A faraway gleam in the HR tour guide’s eye told me all I needed to know. I expect the guide took credit for my idea and rode it to a promotion to Director of Gratuitous Amenities. This is why I can’t make it in corporate America.

Only when I got home and woke from my Microsoft-induced daze did I realize the full impact of what I’d just witnessed. Buses? Used for transportation?! And funded by money other than our tax dollars?!! By private companies for their own employees?!?! Is there no end to the horror? It’s like watching a drunk baby fight a police dog for a pigeon carcass — or not.

Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area

If Microsoft has been doing this for years, why is Google getting publicly flogged in San Francisco, caned bloody like a Singapore graffiti artist, for the same thing? If questioned, Microsoft trots out the party line: It reduces the number of Porsches on the road, it’s green, and if you’re against that, you’re a devil sociopath who should turn in the Birkenstocks you were automatically issued when you moved to the Northwest. If Google is trying to promote its bus fleet that way, it’s not chanting loudly enough.

Instead, it’s being vilified as the lead nasty of what’s billed as the growing gentrification of San Francisco by an influx of high-wage tech workers driving residents out because they’re making it possible for landlords to institute massive rent hikes. How is Google’s bus service linked to this problem? I inquired and it seems the only tangible difference between Googlehound and Microbus is that the former stops at public bus stops, while Microbus uses nebulously funded park-and-ride lots, though I suspect some of those are public, too.

That’s the big gripe? That’s a bit of a meander when you’re pissed at real estate developers selling to high-income earners and evicting lower-income longtime residents. That’s definitely gripe-worthy, although it’s as inevitable as BlackBerry devolving into a patent troll, and it’s been going on since 8,000 BC when nomads who lost their tents in a sandstorm said, “Screw it, we’re staying here.” Future generations of those collectives were eventually evicted from their city by an influx of higher-wage yak herders, and that’s been the pattern ever since.

One group giving Google a particularly hard time is what looks like a relatively new urban think tank and protest party, the Heart of the City. Its Spartan site primarily links to the recently leaked and admittedly creepy Google memo instructing its employees on how to respond when questioned about the Googlehound service.

But it also prominently features a list of demands that seem sadly typical of activists who would rather party in the guise of protesting and promote fever dreams while smoking pipes filled with interesting substances.

WE DEMAND: Tech companies pay for their impact on housing & public infrastructure.

A moratorium on all no-fault evictions. Preservation of rent-controlled housing.

Preservation of the heart of the city. A city that cares for its elders, artists, families, and culture.

Investment in all people, not just tech.

I strongly agree with half of the first one — if Google uses public bus stops for its private bus armada, then it should pay a percentage of what it costs to build and maintain those facilities. After that, it gets hazy. Exactly how should private business pay for its economically tenuous “impact on housing”? I suppose a housing fund for low-income families would qualify, and Google can certainly spare the change. But what about the other points? Let’s take a look:

• A moratorium on all no-fault evictions. I don’t think you can pin that on Google as much as opportunistic landlords and developers. Maybe putting horse heads in those beds might prove more effective.
• Preservation of rent-controlled housing. Again, not something tech companies control.
• Preservation of the heart of the city. Not sure what that one means. No new architecture on Mission Street? Or free cardiac care for Giants mascot Lou Seal? Either way, not a tech company responsibility.
• A city that cares for its elders, artists, families, and culture. Come on, that’s not the American way. A city that exploits its elders for Medicare fraud, profits off artists’ work after it kills them with drug-caused public transportation accidents, separates families to further human trafficking, and changes its culture like it changes mayors — that’s the American way. Get on board or move to Detroit.
• Investment in all people, not just tech. I have a funny feeling that tech contributes far more to political reelection coffers than “all people,” so good luck with that one.

OK, those are cynical cop-outs, but I’m old and it takes a lot to get me off the couch and into a protest rally. I’m sure as hell not doing it during morning rush hour just to block a bus full of scared Google geeks who are probably so intent on their laptop screens they won’t see my “Die Google Die” sign anyway.

Adjust your targets accordingly

I get that you need a villain, but why pick on Googlehound? That seems a weak ploy more likely cooked up by anti-Google ex-employees than protesters serious about stopping high-rent no-fault evictions. How about pillorying housing officials like secretary treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, Michael Theriault (sorry, Mike, but it looks like it’s your turn) or Maximus Real Estate Partners, one of many real estate developers looking to build those new high-rent housing hells? I realize you might have to face the fuzz on that path, but at least you’d get the undivided attention of people directly responsible for your problem.

Amazon, Google, and Facebook are shaping up to be the evil empires of the new tech generation, but not because they use public bus stops. It’s because Amazon wants to drive any delivery-based mom-and-pop shops out of business, Google wants to strap an interest-tracking search engine to your face and run your home from its data centers, and Facebook because it never stops looking for ways to invade your dreams and sell them to retailers, governments, and Somali pirates.

I’d hate it if San Francisco turned into a giant glass-covered office park with taupe walls and fluorescent lighting populated only by Colgate MBAs and Java jockeys driving occasionally exploding Teslas. But if you want to quash that, you have to spray-paint the right people, not chase a busload of Googlers trying to get to Mountain View.