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22 Apr 2024

USA: Google fires 28 employees after 9 arrested at protest in relation to its provision of technology services to Israel

Phil Pasquini, Shutterstock

San Francisco, CA – September 8, 2022: Activists demonstrated against project "Nimbus," an Amazon and Google Cloud services surveillance program for Israel government and military.

On April 17 2024, nine Google workers were arrested after staging a sit-in protest at the company’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a livestreamed sit-in at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office. The protests, led by the “No Tech for Apartheid” organization, focused on Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing services. Employees also said that they were protesting what they described as "the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim Googlers" — and the company's alleged failure to address the health and safety crisis workers are facing due to the potential impacts of their work.

Following the protests, Google terminated the contracts of 28 employees linked to them, stating: “...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.”