computingdivision.Ina quarterlyfinancialreport,the
companysaidAmazonWebServicesbroughtin$1.6billion
inrevenue,wasgrowingata 50%annualrate,andwasmuch
moreprofitablethanAmazon’sretailbusiness.
Atthetime,almostallofGoogle’srevenuecamefrom
advertising.Itsfuturisticforaysintoself-drivingcarsand
smartcitieshadyettoproducemuchrevenue,anditswilder
projects—liketheonetocuredeath—werebasicallyglori-
fiedscienceexperiments.SomeveteranGooglersdescribed
Amazon’scloudcomputingannouncementasa reminderof
howfarbehindthecompanywasina businessthat,byall
rights,it shoulddominate.
Cloudcomputinginvolvesbuildinggiantdatacentersand
developingsoftwaretohelpbigorganizationsautomatically
sort,share,andanalyzedata.Googlehadbeenmakingthis
kind of software since the late 1990s, when founders Larry
Page and Sergey Brin began writing algorithms to create an
index of web pages for their search engine. Over the years
the company focused on AI—a trend that accelerated in 2015,
when Sundar Pichai, who once called the technology “more
profound” than fire or electricity, replaced Page as CEO.
The following year, Google formed its Cloud AI unit, hir-
ing well-known scientists such as Fei-Fei Li, a computer vision
whiz from Stanford, to promote the technology as vital for
a wide range of industries. Google Cloud executives saw the
U.S. Defense Department and its $700 billion annual budget
as a potential marquee client—a way to signal it could build
more than free search engines and web-based email software.
On the other hand, many Googlers were increasingly hostile
to the idea of any kind of government contracting, especially
after Trump suggested he might build a registry of Muslims,
and then, after assuming office, issued an executive order
denying entry to people from a handful of mostly Muslim coun-
tries. Employees signed pledges not to help build any technol-
ogy to enable immigration crackdowns. And they rushed to
public protests. Brin showed up at one demonstration at San
Francisco International Airport, and Pichai seemed sympa-
thetic, too. “It’s something you should never compromise on,”
he told a group of 2,000 employees at a protest on Jan. 30, 2017.Even as Google executives expressed public disapproval
of the White House’s immigration policies, the company’sclouddivisionwasredesigningitsinfrastructurewithaneye
towardwinningoverthemilitary.Onemajorchallengewas
thatGooglehadintegratedallitsdatacentersintoa singlesys-
tem.Thatwasconvenientforsupportingitssearchengine,
butit madeworkingwithclassifiedgovernmentdataimpos-
sible.TheU.S.generallyrequiresa computingarchitecture
knownasairgapping,whichinvolvesphysicallyisolated
serverswithsoftwarewrittensoit doesn’tinteractwiththe
broadernetwork.WhenAmazonwona largeCIAcontract
in2013,it segregatedagencydatafromthatofotherclients.
RetrofittingGoogle’scloudtoenableairgappingwasa
labor-intensiveprocessthatinvolveddozensofdistinctteams,
accordingtoonepersonwhoworkedonit.Therewasnothing
inherentlycontroversialaboutthechanges,butsomeemploy-
eesobjectedtodoingsotoenablemilitarypartnerships.A
handful of senior Google engineers—the Group of Nine, as
they came to be known—refused to work on the project, lay-
ing the groundwork for a broader revolt.
That would come when details of Project Maven started
toleakthroughoutthecompanyinJanuary2018.Atfirst
theprojectwasdiscussed behindcloseddoorsandon
employee-onlyGoogle+pages.(Googleshutdownthemuch-
maligned consumer version of its social network in April, but
a version for internal business communications lives on.)
Then, Liz Fong-Jones, a site reliability engineer for Google
Cloud, asked in an internal post if the military might use
Google’s software to help orchestrate a drone strike on a
particular person or group. The outrage among employees
was swift. Fong-Jones declined to comment.
Google tried to quell concerns by arguing that it was just
sifting through surveillance footage, not helping with com-
bat decisions. Executives also cited the small value of the
Maven contract, about $9 million. But subsequent reports in
the tech blog Gizmodo showed that Google expected reve-
nuefromMaventoeventuallyriseto$250million.Andengi-
neersexaminingthecodefoundlinesofsoftwareintendedto
identifycars,whichtheyinterpretedasevidence that Google
was indeed helping target combat strikes.
Google and the military have maintained that Maven isn’t
a weapons program; recently, Shanahan said the drones
involved weren’t even armed. But Jack Poulson, then a com-
puter scientist at the company, says these denials are41Bloomberg Businessweek November 25, 2019DUNFORD: COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE. SHANAHAN: COURTESY U.S. AIR FORCE. WALKER: COURTESY GOOGLE
Dunford Shanahan Walker