I get the rationale of targeting Google's private bus fleet. There's nothing like a giant bus billboard rolling through your neighborhood to remind you of gentrification and the exorbitant rent prices. I do, however, find it pretty difficult to sympathize with the protesters. Would these people have preferred everyone on the bus to have driven their cars instead?

I suppose you could argue that the buses themselves are enabling gentrification, because if they weren't there, more people might stay in the valley instead of living in the city. That's a pretty tenuous connection though because you could argue that it would have happened anyway (I did the commute over ten years ago between Potrero and Palo Alto).

If Google wanted to alleviate some of the vitriol, they could offer to allow non-Googlers to use the bus (like Stanford's Marguerite system) either for free or some kind of nominal charge. I realize that's a headache, but instead of getting bad publicity, they turn it on its head and the "two tier" comments ring pretty hollow.