Google dismissed 28 workers on Wednesday for opposing the tech company's cloud computing agreement with the Israeli government.
Protesters protests where people sit in as a form of opposition Tuesday at two Google offices — New York City and Sunnyvale, Calif. — in opposition to the $1.2 billion agreement that the company has with Amazon for providing cloud computing services to Israel. Nine individuals were taken into custody.
“A small number of employees protesting physically entered and disrupted a few of our locations,” stated a Google spokesperson. “Blocking other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.”
“After rejecting multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was involved to remove them for the safety of the office,” the statement continued. “We have completed individual investigations that led to the termination of employment for 28 workers, and will continue to investigate and take action as necessary.”
No Tech for Apartheid, the activist group that arranged Tuesday’s protests, referred to the dismissals as a “flagrant act of retaliation.”
“This evening, Google randomly dismissed over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly take part in yesterday’s significant, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.
“This blatant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google prioritizes its $1.2 billion agreement with the genocidal Israeli government and military over its own workers,” it added.
The agreement, referred to as Project Nimbus, has met resistance from workers and activists since it was initially signed in 2021. However, objections to the cloud computing agreement have intensified amid Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise attack.
Google emphasized Wednesday that it “supports numerous governments around the world” with its cloud computing services and that its collaboration with the Israeli government “is not focused on highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
“We have been very clear that the Nimbus agreement is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” the Google spokesperson said.
However, Time reported last week that Google is offering cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
