Tech Behemoth Google Has Backed out of Bidding Pentagon’s Cloud Computing Contract

Pentagon’s huge cloud computing contract valued at a whopping $10 billion will not have Google as one of its bidders. In a statement to Bloomberg, Alphabet Inc.’s Google revealed that it has decided not to be a part of the competition since the contract named “JEDI” may not coordinate with its corporate principles.

JEDI which is an abbreviation of Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure is a massive project of the US Defence Dept which is meant to boost the Pentagon’s adoption of cloud computing and services.

A Google spokesperson said “While we are working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many areas, we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.”

With big contenders like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM, the bidding for the project closes this week.  However, Google has withdrawn after Google’s employees expressed concern over inventing products for the government.

A petition was signed with over 3000 employees and given to the CEO, Sundar Pichai regarding Google’s involvement in the Pentagon.

The petition read as follows “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be canceled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”