Donald Trump has angered another Silicon Valley bigwig: Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Google CEO Says ‘We Must Support’ Muslims in Wake of Trump’s Talk of Ban
“The open-mindedness, tolerance, and acceptance of new Americans is one of the country’s greatest strengths,” he wrote.
Asa Mathat
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
On Friday evening, Pichai published a blog post on Medium titled “Let’s not let fear defeat our values,” in which he expressed his dismay with the recent discourse of intolerance spreading throughout the country and called on readers to “support Muslim and other minority communities in the U.S. and around the world.”
While Pichai does not reference Trump specifically, the presidential candidate’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. clearly inspired the piece. Another, as Pichai described in the post, is the opportunity the CEO was given in the U.S. after moving here 22 years ago from India.
“The open-mindedness, tolerance, and acceptance of new Americans is one of the country’s greatest strengths and most defining characteristics,” Pichai wrote. “And that is no coincidence — America, after all, was and is a country of immigrants. That is why it’s so disheartening to see the intolerant discourse playing out in the news these days — statements that our country would be a better place without the voices, ideas and the contributions of certain groups of people, based solely on where they come from, or their religion.”
Pichai’s piece comes a few days after Mark Zuckerberg penned a post on Facebook with a similar sentiment also inspired by Trump’s declarations in the wake of the spate of shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris.
“If you’re a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you,” Zuckerberg wrote.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
