“Don’t be evil” was Google’s motto for a few years. That has all shifted “do the right thing” when the technology company became a subsidiary of Alphabet in 2015. Whatever slogan you select, it seems that some Google employees feel that their company is violating its own code of ethics by working with the Israeli government.
This week, Google fired 28 employees, nine of whom were arrested for participating in a sit-in protesting the corporate’s cloud contract with Israel. Google and Amazon signed a $1.2 billion cope with the Israeli government back in 2021 Goal The goal of “Project Nimbus” is to offer the Israeli government and military with cloud computing services.
According to the group No Tech for Apartheid, which organized the protests, not all of those fired were directly involved within the sit-in. But the Nimbus Treaty is becoming increasingly controversial despite the variety of Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks 30,000. Recently, a UN expert condemned Israel’s military motion in Gaza, describing it as tantamount Genocide.
“Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian are genocide profiteers,” No Tech for Apartheid wrote in a press release. “We cannot understand how these men can sleep at night while their technology has enabled 100,000 Palestinians to be killed, reported missing or wounded in the last six months of Israeli genocide and counting.”
Although Google has fired a lot of its employees from the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign, the group shouldn’t be giving up. “The truth is clear: Google is afraid of us,” the press release said, adding that the corporate’s actions contradicted Google’s supposed “open culture.”
No Tech for Apartheid says that in three years of protest it has “not heard from a single leader about our concerns.”
“These illegal mass layoffs will not stop us. On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement,” they are saying. “Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company abandons Project Nimbus and no longer promotes this genocide.”
As for the project itself, Google claims in an announcement that work on Project Nimbus “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence.” But pro-Palestinian Google employees point to reporting by Time magazinerevealed the small print from the contract indicating that Google provided cloud services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
A Google spokesperson responded Fortune’s investigation alleging that “these protests were part of a long-running campaign by a group of organizations and individuals, most of whom do not work at Google.” According to the corporate, a “small number of employees” had caused a disruption and violated company policy by “physically impeding the work of other employees and denying them access to our facilities.” Google says law enforcement was called after employees failed to go away after “repeated requests” and investigations into 28 employees led to their termination, adding that Google will proceed to “take action as necessary.”
However, No Tech for Apartheid pushes back against Google’s claims, including that Google insists that almost all of the dissenting staff weren’t employed by Google, or that protesters “defaced property” and obstructed other employees as a pretext to justify his actions. The “layoffs were clearly retaliatory,” the group says.
No Tech for Apartheid also says the persecution is aimed more at “our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues” than anyone else.
“Workers have the right to know how their labor is being used and to have a say in ensuring that the technology they build is not used in harmful ways,” the protesters said in a separate news release. “Google is depriving us of these basic rights, which led us to hold sit-ins in offices across the country yesterday.”
