Microsoft seems to be a lot more grounded in the dollars and cents of running a business. I doubt a few squeaky wheels distract them.
Google seems to still attract many idealists who feel they’re creating a better world (ironically, through advertising). They seem to operate with a flatter management structure that gives engineers freeer reign.
Also, the nature of the projects seem to be fundamentally different.
I find this news to be incredibly ironic.
And I disagree with the demands, just in my personal opinion.
We have real, powerful enemies that would love to dethrone US as the dominant nation. Those who demand this restriction for working on military contracts have to seriously consider this.
If private sector workers can regularly get their private sector companies to pull out of US military contracts, we have a problem.
Wherever you draw the distinction, know that it's arbitrary.
A military with guns but no transportation is like a clock with an escapement but no gears. Gears are used by lots of things, not just clocks, and clocks need an escapement, but without gears that clock doesn't function. The gears don't define the clock in quite the same way as an escapement, but they're nevertheless necessary.
My point here is that making cars for the military but refusing to make guns for them is quite silly. If you really want to opt-out of the military industrial complex, you'll need to make more sacrifices.
"Car" in this case is shorthand for
> "generally useful tool that can be used in the commission of violence (eg. cars)"
A humvee is just that. However it's also specifically designed to be one component of various weapon systems; e.g. humvees with TOW anti-tank guided missiles mounted on top. When configured in that way, a humvee is no less a weapon than a tank. So a humvee is also "a gun" (shorthand for "something that kills".) That's not hypothetical either, such humvees were used in the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein.
So let me reiterate. Just about anything the military uses is used to facilitate killing in one way or the other. The degree to which any particular widget contributes to the lethality of the military is a smooth gradient. This was my point with the humvee, it exists somewhere in the middle. Since we're dealing with a gradient, where you decide to draw your line in the sand arbitrary.