Google fired 28 employees last week following sit-in protests at two of its offices who participated in a sit-down protest over the company’s “$1.2 billion agreement with Israel. This action follows the suspension and subsequent arrest of nine workers in New York and California on Tuesday.
These demonstrations were sparked by Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for cloud computing services shared with Amazon. The news of Israeli forces using AI to carry out strikes on Gaza with permissive ‘collateral damage’ surfaced, resulting in these protests.
Demonstrations took place at Google’s Sunnyvale, California, site and the New York office, where employees occupied CEO Thomas Kurian’s office and staged a sit-in in the 10th floor common area, some of whom wore traditional Arab headscarves.
Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, stated in the official memo, “Behavior like this has no place in our workplace, and we will not tolerate it.” The memo also cautioned that the company would take further action as necessary: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior—uup to and including termination.”
In response, the “No Tech for Apartheid” group, the force behind the protests, criticized Google’s dismissals as “a flagrant act of retaliation.”
“In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a Medium post. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about the terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.”
Footage from the New York headquarters showed police officers, escorted by a Google representative, instructing the remaining protestors to leave the premises. Despite warnings of administrative leave and restricted building access, the demonstrators refused to comply, prompting the prospect of arrest for trespassing.
Concurrently, arrests were made at the Sunnyvale headquarters, where protesters were livestreaming their demonstration on Twitch. Following the arrests, the imprisoned employees issued comments urging Google to withdraw from the Project Nimbus contract, citing ethical issues and violations of Google’s AI Principles.
The Conflict
The controversy around Project Nimbus began with its introduction in 2021, causing continuing internal criticism inside Google and Amazon. Recent instances, such as the termination of an engineer who denounced the project at a technology conference, have fueled criticism, with calls for withdrawal becoming increasingly vocal.
TIME reported that Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which fueled employee dissatisfaction. The disclosure sparked the latest wave of protests, with demonstrators demanding accountability from Google’s leadership.
In response, a Google Cloud representative described the protests as part of a larger external effort, highlighting the interruption to everyday operations and breach of company standards. In reaction to the protests, officials promised to conduct an investigation and take appropriate measures.
