25 awesome and elaborate ways tech companies showed support at San Francisco's Pride Parade

Biz Carson
SF Pride parade 3Biz Carson/Business Insider

Gay pride parades around the nation had a little something extra to celebrate this weekend after the Supreme Court ruled on Friday to legalise gay marriage in all 50 states.

In San Francisco, the Pride Parade lasted for more than six hours. The streets were filled with rainbow flags, confetti and coordinated dances.

Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook (which some members of the LGBT community protested against) sponsored or walked in the San Francisco Pride Parade to show support and a little bit of their tech, too. From self-driving cars to rainbow-wrapped Teslas, here’s how Silicon Valley celebrated the Pride Parade.

Airbnb was the first company down the block to kick off Pride for the tech companies.

Its float featured its #HostWithPride dance by rapper Le1f, who rode along on Airbnb's little house platform. Here's a GIF of what that looked like as it zipped past.

Apple followed Airbnb and had, by far, the largest showing of any tech company at Pride. We didn't spot Tim Cook in the crowd, but that's not surprising considering it took at least five minutes for the whole entourage of 8,000 employees to pass in their matching minimalist Apple pride t-shirts.

The creativity award goes to one Apple supporter who wore an old iMac G3 on their head with a heart on its screen.

Salesforce followed Apple with a giant crowd of 'Outforce' supporters.

The Salesforce employees and supporters had matching dances to go with their rainbow and cloud themed float.

To go with the dancing, Salesforce had a half-dozen, cloud-themed pedicabs that brought around drag queens.

Netflix's message was to 'Watch loud. Stream proud. Be an Original.'

The company was definitely touting its original series. It had mini-stages where drag queens were parodying some of its shows like Orange is the New Black.

Netflix also brought some of the original actresses along too! Here's Selenis Levnya (Gloria Mendoza) and Danielle Brooks (Taystee) from Orange is the New Black.

Netflix wanted the crowd to tweet what the next show should be.

Despite facing protests from the members of the LGBT community, Facebook was allowed to march in the parade after a 5-4 vote by SF Pride organisers.

They brought an impressive 'Like' float, which was basically a large moving boom box.

The DJ on the Facebook 'Like float' played for its crowd of employees.

Facebookers loved it.

Don't forget they own Instagram. Here's the #InstaPride shirt.

Google also had a dance platform, but it was Android-based. Its message: 'Be together, not the same.'

So, in order to be 'not the same', Google brought out its self-driving car to show off to the world. We couldn't tell if it was operating in self-driving mode or not, but the crowd was excited to see it anyways.

Tesla showed up with two cars of its own, both painted in a beautiful rainbow. Why is this not the default paint option on a Tesla? Get on it, Elon.

Cars weren't the only mode of transportation though. GoDaddy employees rocked some four-wheelers with foam faux-hawks to match.

Dropbox employees opted for pedicarts in addition to walking.

SunPower pedaled around a solar panel that had been dressed up in a rainbow border.

Hotwire and Expedia employees shared a trolley with some drag queens to get around. Motorola employees later followed on their own trolley.

Yahoo and Tumblr also took the trolley approach, although most employees opted to walk and dance.

Yahoo's party included bright purple shirts, rainbow headbands and bubbles.

Lyft supplied its own bright pink car to go with its pink mustaches. It also had some fancy rainbow 'staches for Pride.

Uber employees, on the other hand, got around on everything from scooters to a truck to a float.

Uber had bubbles shooting off the back of a truck to create a party for employees.

Uber also had a larger #RideWithPride float to show all of the cities that it has expanded to.

It wasn't all just crazy transportation though. Autodesk showed off its beautiful ode to Karl the Fog, the nickname of San Francisco's fog. Each laser-cut panel had a quote about diversity.

Genentech twisted some rainbow balloons into a DNA helix to match their company's mission.

The Pride group from NASA Ames had alien blow-up dolls and one person dressed up as an astronaut. Another sign said 'Ride with Sally' in support of Sally Ride, the first female astronaut who only came out in her obituary in 2012.

Intel won the award for largest flag at the parade. It had two employees criss-crossing with flags in front of their entourage.

Zendesk had a crazy 'Oh hey' float. They were fan favourite for colour and creativity when it came to outfit choices.

Ripple Labs, creators of a the Ripple cryptocurrency, had a 'Just Married' float. It's unclear who got married, but they were celebrating anyways because that's the whole point of the weekend..

You didn't need a fancy float to have fun as a tech company though. Oracle didn't bring out any crazy Larry Ellison toys -- no America's Cup yacht was in sight.

But this guy was still having the time of his life with the Oracle crew.

SoundCloud employees had their own dance party. They brought the music, of course.

Adobe employees showed up with what looked like rain-sticks and a state flag with rainbow stripes.

Twitter had a smaller ensemble, but its trolley was decked out in blue balloons and employees marched with matching shirts.

Optimizely was the last float in the parade, so they just turned it into a dance party to close things out.

And while Chipotle may not be a tech company, we'll count it as technical achievement to put people inside a burrito with a disco ball.

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