Google pursues Pentagon cloud contract in spite of past employee concerns

Three years after its involvement with the military’s controversial Project Maven program led to employee strife within its walls, Google reportedly hopes to once again work with the Pentagon. According to The New York Times, the company is “aggressively” pursuing the Defense Department’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability cloud contract. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Engadget it was pursuing a bid.

Announced at the start of July, the program is a replacement for the military’s cancelled $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure initiative. With JEDI, the Pentagon had planned to modernize its IT infrastructure with help from Microsoft. However, the contract stalled after Amazon challenged it in court, in part over allegations former President Donald Trump had interfered with the evaluation process.

Unlike JEDI, JWCC is a multi-vendor contract that will see the military eventually working with more than one company. When the Pentagon announced the program, it said it would collect proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft. At the time, it said they were the two vendors best suited to meet its needs, but noted it was also open to working with other companies. Google did not bid on JEDI in part because of what happened …read more