Google’s New Bus Is for the People
13th January 2015
That’s ‘people’ as in ‘people’s republic’.
Meet a kinder, gentler Google bus — not the sleek and occasionally despised charter service that transports thousands of Googlers to the company’s suburban headquarters each morning, but a free public shuttle that launched here this week.
The electric-powered Mountain View Community Shuttle is Google’s gift to a hometown still grappling with the weight of being the corporate hub for a global Internet giant. The two-year pilot program also helps the company sustain its do-gooder image amid rising anxiety over the Bay Area’s real estate prices and economic inequality, both frequently blamed on the meteoric incomes of tech workers.
Lesson: If you’re rude and noisy in public, and your target is not a Fashionable Minority, you will get paid to shut up.
Since you always get more of what you pay for, look for more of this sort of thing in the future.