Google Bus Halted By Protesters in Mission, But Best Bit Staged

Protester posing as Google employee gives best anti-tech rant.

Google bus guy may have been a fake, but the outrage -- and the drama -- is all too real.

A group of activists opposed to the tech industry's tightening stranglehold on life in San Francisco staged a well-publicized protest on Monday morning: they blocked a Google bus on its way to Mountain View on Valencia Street in the Mission.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian was on hand to witness the best bit: a young man in business casual attire angrily confronted the protesters blocking the bus, entreating them to get a better job -- or to move to a city they can afford.

In other words, all the worst stereotypes of the rapacious tech workers destroying San Francisco. Except there was a catch: he wasn't really a Google employee.

As the morning's drama made a splash throughout tech news and played out on Twitter -- by 1 p.m., a Twitter account for @GoogleBusGuy had already gone through all cycles of life, creation and deletion -- the Internet swiftly identified the angry young man as an activist and organizer with experience in the Occupy movement.

But even though GoogleBusGuy was an organizer and not real, the anger and resentment over a widening gap in wealth -- for which tech is blamed, fairly or unfairly -- is very real.

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