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Gay+ Pride

Google the words “gay pride” this week and your search bar displays the colours of the Pride rainbow.

Include the word “Google” in that search and you’ll find an unequivocal endorsement of gay marriage from the company’s co-founder, Sergey Brin.

“We should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love,” he wrote in 2008.

That’s because supporting LGBT rights internationally is a semi-official mission statement for Google.

The company sponsors LGBT Pride around the world. Hundreds of employees march down Market Street for San Francisco’s Pride parade – close to its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California – and participate in celebrations in Boston, New York, Chicago, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tokyo, Warsaw and elsewhere.

This week in Toronto, Google+, the year-old social network, will have a float in the Pride parade. And that’s only part of the company’s Pride involvement.

This, however, was not a company directive, but the result of the efforts of a single enthusiastic Googler.

“When I arrived in Toronto two and a half years ago, I found it to be a very gay-friendly city. I felt accepted here,” says Xavier Pepion, a Google Canada product marketing manager. “So I thought I should definitely do something for the LGTB community in Toronto.”

The typical corporate route, Pepion admits, would be to slap a logo on some Pride promotional material, but he wanted something “cooler.”

First, Pepion reached out to Pride Toronto, organizers of this week’s celebrations.

He helped them launch a Google+ social hub to share news, photos and videos in the stretch leading up to Sunday’s parade.

Then he arranged to make something for Pride to share. Google commissioned a group of short films directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, telling the stories of an elderly couple, a bear, a pre-op trans person, a 17-year-old who recently came out to his parents, and more.

Again to Google’s credit, the videos avoid typical corporate blandness for genuine filmmaking that’s funny and touching. Also hitting the right note, the shorts are set to the 1926 novelty song I’ve Never Seen A Straight Banana, wryly performed by the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt.

“What’s really cool about this is it’s not Google talking to the community, but a platform for the community to talk to each other,” Pepion says.

Google’s jumping into Pride comes at a crucial time, both in its home country, where the right to marry is evidently still up for debate, and in Ontario, where trans people, Catholic school students and Pride itself are fighting political battles.

On its face, this is a savvy promotion to break into an underserved and lucrative market for the tech company. But given the Google’s work around LGBT rights – from its campaign for marriage equality to its support for its queer employees, or Gayglers, Google deserves whatever cheers it gets when it rolls down Church on Sunday.

“The float is very important to show people that Google is here and at Pride,” says Pepion. “It’s important to show up, be physically present.”

joshuae@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/joshuaerrett

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