Google fired 28 employees on Wednesday following a protest by employees the day before. The protest on Tuesday, wherein dozens of employees staged sit-in protests in Sunnyvale and New York City, including the Google Cloud CEO’s office, led to nine arrests.
The protests were led by No Tech for Apartheid, a group of over 1000 tech workers who have been calling for the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.22 billion contract from Google and Amazon that provides Israel with cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and data centers.
A Google spokesperson said that their work “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Although there is currently no evidence that Google or Amazon’s technology has been used to kill civilians, Google has been working with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Reporting from +972 Magazine has also found AI systems named “Lavender” and “The Gospel” used to label Palestinians in Gaza as targets. Although it is not currently known which cloud provider is being used to power these systems, the systems have stoked concerns.
“If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again,” Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president of global security, said in an internal memo.
Despite the warning, No Tech for Apartheid promised to “continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide.”
The group called the firings “illegal” and said the action was due to Google being “terrified” of the group, in a statement on Thursday.
These moves come after action from other companies last year, when Starbucks sued its union, Starbucks Workers United, over a post on X expressing solidarity with Palestine. In another incident, a Wix employee was fired after criticizing Israel on social media.
Earlier this month, Apple also terminated several employees after they wore pro-Palestinian clothing.
Prominent figures have faced discipline and firings over comments made about the Palestinian cause since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
