Google fires employees who protested contract with Israel

Google on Wednesday fired 28 employees who protested the tech giant’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.

Protesters held protests Tuesday at two Google offices — New York and Sunnyvale, California — in protest of the $1.2 billion contract the company shares with Amazon to provide cloud computing services to Israel. Nine people were arrested.

“A small number of protesting employees entered and invaded some of our locations,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Physically impeding other employees from working and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior.”

“After refusing several requests to leave the premises, authorities were hired to remove them to ensure the safety of the office,” the statement continued. “To date, we have completed individual investigations that have resulted in the termination of the employment of 28 employees and will continue to investigate and take necessary action.”

No Tech for Apartheid, the activist group that organized Tuesday’s protests, called the firings a “blatant act of retaliation.”

“Tonight, Google indiscriminately fired more than two dozen workers, including those of us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, 10-hour Bicoastal protests,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.

“This blatant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values ​​its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” he added.

The contract, known as Project Nimbus, has faced backlash from workers and activists since it was initially signed in 2021. However, objections to the cloud computing deal have grown amid Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in response to the surprise attack. of Hamas on October 7.

Google emphasized on Wednesday that it “supports multiple governments around the world” with its cloud computing services and that its work with the Israeli government “is not directed toward highly sensitive, confidential, or military-relevant workloads for weapons or intelligence services”.

“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, which agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” said the Google spokesperson.

However, Time reported last week that Google is providing cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.