Who is Nate Higgers and Is He Really The Acting CEO of Google?

Nate Higgers is a fictional character, and he is not Google’s interim CEO. There is no acting CEO for the American multinational technology company. Sundar Pichai, who has been in charge of operations since October 2015, is still Google’s CEO.

The origin of the Nate Higgers moniker can be traced back to an online joke regarding Google’s allegedly anti-black corporate culture. You can better understand how Nate Higgers came to be the interim CEO of Google by changing the initial letters of his name. Nate Higgers is a play on words that illustrates Google’s claimed attitude toward people of color discrimination; he is not a real person.

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?

When some Twitter and Reddit users made jokes about Nate Higger serving as the technology company’s acting CEO, the acting CEO of Google began to trend online. As could be expected, this piqued people’s interest, and they began searching for “acting CEO of Google” on Google to learn whether Sundar Pichai had resigned as the company’s CEO.

The searches turned up a Nate Higgers LinkedIn profile. The Acting CEO of Google and “Nate Higgers” were searched for more often than usual because no major news outlet covered the changes in the company’s leadership; as a result, they started 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.

Additionally, April Curley said that Google fired her after she and other employees started compiling a list of changes they wanted the business to implement. When the Department of Fair Employment and Housing began looking into Google for potential discrimination against black female employees, Curley filed her lawsuit.

People started shouting Google Nate Higgers, which means Google Hate *iggers (black people), because other black people had made similar charges regarding the company’s treatment of its black employees.