Nate Higgers is not a real person and definitely not the Acting CEO of Google. The American multinational technology company doesn’t have an Acting CEO. Google’s Chief Executive Officer remains Sundar Pichai, who has been at the helm of affairs since October 2015.
The Nate Higgers name began as an online joke derived from the allegations about Google’s racially biased corporate culture against Black people. Switch the first letters of the name, and you get a better idea of how Nate Higgers became the Acting CEO of Google. So Nate Higgers is not a real person but a pun that expresses Google’s alleged discriminatory attitude toward people of color.
Is Nate Higgers a Real Person?
Nate Higgers is not a real person. While it is thought to be a name associated with the acting CEO of Google, it was originally not a name but two words camouflaged in a way to avoid offending people. In a nutshell, the name means “Hate *iggers.” Anyone conversant with internet colloquialisms should be familiar with the words. People only took to saying Nate Higgers to bypass the slur and avoid offending anyone.
The name had been around before people started using it as the name of the acting CEO of Google. If someone calls you Nate Higgers, the person is essentially saying you hate black people and is racist. And if someone says he is “nate higgers”, well, the person is a racist, ensuring they don’t get in trouble for it. But most time, the name is used to indicate that someone is prejudiced and antagonistic toward people of color.
How Did The Acting CEO of Google Start Trending?
The Acting CEO of Google started trending online when some Twitter and Reddit users started joking about Nate Higger being the acting CEO of the technology company. As one would expect, people became curious about this and started googling “acting CEO of Google” in a bid to find out if Sundar Pichai has stepped down as the CEO of the company.
The searches returned a Linkedin profile with the name Nate Higgers. As no major news platform reported the changes in the leadership of the company, more searches were done about “Nate Higgers” and “the Acting CEO of Google,”; so much so that they began trending.
Of course, the name Nate Higgers is not real, and Google does not have an Acting CEO. The name and Linkedin profile was meant to be a joke, one that calls Google out for their perceived racially biased corporate culture against people of color.
The Nate Higgers Trend Originated from a 2022 Lawsuit against Google
While the fake name trended recently, posing as the Acting CEO of Google, the story behind it dates back to March 2022. It had been reported then that a plaintiff named April Curley filed a lawsuit against the technology company, accusing it of systemic racial bias against its black employees. The suit alleged that the company nudges its black workers towards lower-level jobs, pays them less, and makes it difficult for them to advance in position.
Curley filed her suit at the federal court in San Jose, California. Her complaint also claimed that the company subjects black employees to a hostile work environment. According to her, black workers at Google’s Mountain View campus in California are often grilled by security and made to show identification before they gain access to the building.
April Curley also alleged that Google terminated her employment after she and other workers began making a list of reforms they wanted the company to make. Curley filed her case when the Department of Fair Employment and Housing started to investigate Google for possible discrimination and treatment of black female workers.
As they were other black people who had made similar claims about the company’s attitude toward its black workers, people started saying Google Nate Higgers; which means Google Hate *iggers (black people).