From a public relations standpoint, 2025 hasn’t been a great year for Google or parent company Alphabet.
After donating $1 million for Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the corporation rushed to rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” on Google Maps, significantly throttled-back its internal diversity hiring policies, and reversed a previous promise to not allow the use of its Artificial Intelligence products for weapons or government surveillance purposes.
In February, Google Calendar users discovered that a number of highly visible cultural celebrations (including Pride Month, Black History Month, Indigenous Peoples Month and Hispanic Heritage Month) had been removed from the application.
The tech giant, with a $1.8 trillion market valuation, found its cash-cow digital advertising network branded an illegal monopoly by a federal court this month. And that was after another court concluded that the company’s namesake search engine was illegally stifling competitors and innovation.
Then there was a so-called “remedy hearing” in Washington, D.C. earlier this week that could determine whether Google remains in its current form, or if it may be forced to sell-off its popular Chrome Web browser.
Ouch!
Perhaps all the bad press had something to do with Google and YouTube cueing-up some positive coverage on local news broadcasts with a feel-good announcement involving computers for school kids. Oh, and how it’s using AI with wildfire detection satellites.
This morning, Google announced it is donating 3,000 Chromebooks to school kids in communities impacted by the Palisades and Eaton Fires. That’s part of a $15 million general relief grant for the greater Los Angeles area that includes $3 million in education support funding.
“We’re a one-for-one school district,” said Pasadena Board of Education President Jennifer Hall-Lee. “That means every student, in all grades, has a Chromebook. But during the fire many students left their Chromebook behind, so those are gone and that’s a huge problem.”
“We are very grateful for the support of Google as we rebuild after the Eaton Fire,” said Hall-Lee.
When asked how many of the donated Chromebooks would be allocated to Pasadena-area students, Hall-Lee didn’t know. The lead Google representative at the media event, Google VP and local office leader Adam Stewart, also didn’t have that information, saying, “we don’t know yet how much of this will be for PUSD.”
But, presumably, SOME of those computers will find their way into the hands of Pasadena and Altadena students.
Congressperson Judy Chu also spoke at the donation announcement, thanking Google for “the $3 million grant for our schools,” but she mainly focused on praising how the company’s AI technology built into the FireSat blaze spotting network may help with wildfire detection in the future.
Chu was unclear, though, how FireSat would have actually helped with the fast-moving Eaton Fire, which was driven through Eaton Canyon by 70 mph gale-force winds. Unlike other wildfires, knowing where and when the Eaton Fire started didn’t take AI or satellite technology to figure out, the issue was preventing it from starting at all.
The staged-for-TV-news event closed with a Google staffer distributing black “❤️ Google” baseball caps to the 30 or so Pasadena Unified 5th graders and a few high schoolers in attendance, who were then encouraged to shout “I love Google!” followed by “I love YouTube!” in support of the beleaguered $1.8 trillion corporation.
