Employee Protests at Google: Dismissals and Company Response
Google terminated over two dozen employees who staged protests this week against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
The dismissals followed an investigation that revealed the employees had organized protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, as reported on X by the group that coordinated the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid.
BREAKING—DOZENS OF @GOOGLE WORKERS LEAD HISTORIC COAST TO COAST-INS AT @GOOGLECLOUD CEO THOMAS KURIAN’S OFFICE IN SUNNYVALE & @GOOGLE’s NYC 10TH FLOOR COMMONS. They refuse to leave until @google stops powering the genocide in Gaza
LIVESTREAM: https://t.co/uUiPbr3oDz pic.twitter.com/vCkInh0769
— No Tech For Apartheid (@NoTechApartheid) April 16, 2024
During the protests, participants displayed banners with messages such as “No More Genocide For Profit” and “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers.”
The spokesperson underscored, “A small faction of employee demonstrators breached our premises and disrupted operations across multiple locations.” Their actions of obstructing fellow employees’ work and denying access to our facilities violate our policies and are entirely unacceptable. Despite repeated requests to leave, they refused, leading us to involve law enforcement to ensure office safety.”
They continued, asserting, “Following comprehensive individual investigations, we have made the decision to terminate the employment of 28 employees. We remain committed to conducting further investigations and taking appropriate action as required.”
Google Cloud Contract Controversy
According to No Tech For Apartheid, Google and Amazon have a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military, known as Project Nimbus. The group vehemently denounced the dismissals, declaring, “This blatant act of retaliation underscores Google’s prioritization of its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government, despite its genocidal actions, andmilitary more than its own workers.”
Israel denies allegations of genocide in Gaza, asserting that it is fighting against Hamas in self-defense. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in approximately 1,200 casualties and more than 250 hostages.
Google Cloud’s contract with the Israeli government traces back to 2021, marked by the company’s announcement that it had been selected to deliver “public cloud services to assist in addressing various challenges within the public sector of the country, spanning healthcare, transportation, and education.”
However, the protests ensued subsequent to a report published in Time magazine earlier this month. The report cited an internal company document revealing that Israel’s Ministry of Defense is a customer of Google Cloud.
According to Time, the Ministry of Defense has its own secure access point to Google-provided computing infrastructure, enabling it to store and process data and utilize artificial intelligence services. Additionally, earlier this year, the ministry sought consulting support from Google to expand its access to Google Cloud, as reported by Time.
No Tech for Apartheid pointed out that the article indicated Google had “developed custom tools” for the Ministry of Defense and had increased its contracting with Israel’s military since the conflict began.
In response, a Google spokesperson stated that Google Cloud “supports various governments worldwide, including the Israeli government.”
“We have consistently stated that the Nimbus contract involves workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, which agree to abide by our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy. This work does not involve highly sensitive, classified, or military-related workloads associated with weapons or intelligence services,” the spokesperson added.
