A Google spokesperson revealed on Thursday that the search engine company had fired 28 workers as a result of a disruptive sit-down protest over its contract with the Israeli government.
The organization “No Tech for Apartheid,” which has long fought “Project Nimbus,” Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion deal to supply cloud services to the Israeli government, staged the demonstration on Tuesday.
An advocacy organization on X, formerly Twitter, posted a video of the demonstration showing police detaining Google employees in the Sunnyvale, California, office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
The advocacy group said that for ten hours, Kurian’s office was occupied.
Employees carried placards that read, “Googlers against Genocide,” in reference to allegations pertaining to Israel’s assaults on Gaza.
Protesters “No Tech for Apartheid,” who also staged demonstrations in New York and Seattle, cited a Time magazine article from April 12 detailing a proposed Google deal that would have charged the Israeli Defense Ministry over $1 million for consultancy services.
While a Google representative stated that the protests are “part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at Google,” a “small number” of employees “disrupted” a few Google facilities.
“After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety,” a spokeswoman for Google stated. “We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”
According to a Google representative, Google offers cloud computing services to “numerous” governments, including Israel.
“This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” a spokeswoman for Google stated.
