05-01-2024
In March, a Google cloud division employee publicly said, "I refuse to build technology that powers genocide" during a keynote speech from a managing director of Google's Israel business. This employee also said, "No cloud for apartheid." Google fired that employee. During that same month, staffers filled the company's message board with commentary about military contracts with Israel. Google shut down the message board because it was disruptive to its business. More than 600 employees asked the company to withdraw its annual Mind the Tech conference sponsorship promoting the Israeli tech industry.
Google fired additional groups of employees in April for similar protests against Project Nimbus, which is its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government and military. Google denies the project helps Israel with weapons or intelligence services. On April 16, Google fired 28 employees who participated in anti-Israel protests that took over its corporate offices for ten hours in New York and Sunnyvale, California. Google's VP of Global Security said the groups took over office space, defaced property, and made coworkers feel threatened. The police arrested the demonstrators.
CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a statement advising employees that Google is a business and not the place to engage in disruptive acts, to make coworkers feel unsafe, or to debate politics. The company fired another 20 or so workers in connection with the sit-in. A representative for the activist group No Tech for Apartheid says the number of fired workers is now more than 50. The group says the recent firings include "non-participating bystanders," and Google intended to "quash dissent" and "reassert its power over them." Google asserts everyone it fired was "personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity."