No one protests like San Francisco.
The scene: Tomorrow, outside of Google’s I/O conference, an assemblage of protestors will dress up like Star Wars characters to decry Google and the economic impact of the technology industry. The goal, the group told TechCrunch in an email, is to highlight rising income inequality in San Francisco, a city now infamous for its spiraling rents.
Google has become a symbol for the rapid change that San Francisco is currently undergoing. Protestors target Google’s buses that take its employees to and from work in the South Bay.
Google’s I/O developer event, similar to confabs held by Apple, Microsoft, Box, Dropbox and others, will see a cluster of Glass-adorned techies swarming the South of Market area of San Francisco. Toss in a protest and what the group promises to be a “giant 10′ by 20′ banner of Darth Vader with Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ credo,” and this year’s I/O could be the most interesting yet.
TechCrunch will be onsite all day. We’ve reached out to Google for comment on the promised protest.
It’s worth noting that this is not the only planned protest of the search giant. Today, a number of net neutrality advocates set up shop outside of its Mountain View headquarters, demanding that the company work harder to ensure an open Internet. Google has been a public supporter of net neutrality since at least 2006.
In other news, Google announced today that it has doubled the RAM that Glass ships with to 2GB.