London
CNN
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Google has fired greater than two dozen workers who protested this week in opposition to the corporate’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli authorities.
The employees had been dismissed after an investigation discovered that they’d staged protests inside Google’s workplaces in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the workplace of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, based on a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid.
Protesters held banners that learn “No Extra Genocide For Revenue” and “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers.”
A Google spokesperson informed CNN Thursday that the protests “had been a part of a long-standing marketing campaign by a gaggle of organizations and individuals who largely don’t work” on the firm.
“A small variety of worker protesters entered and disrupted a number of of our areas. Bodily impeding different workers’ work and stopping them from accessing our services is a transparent violation of our insurance policies, and utterly unacceptable conduct. After refusing a number of requests to go away the premises, regulation enforcement was engaged to take away them to make sure workplace security,” the spokesperson added.
“Now we have to this point concluded particular person investigations that resulted within the termination of employment for 28 workers, and can proceed to analyze and take motion as wanted.”
Google and Amazon have a $1.2 billion contract to supply cloud computing companies to the Israeli authorities and army, generally known as Undertaking Nimbus, based on No Tech For Apartheid, who’ve strongly condemned the dismissals.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a transparent indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli authorities and army greater than its personal staff,” the group stated in a statement revealed on Medium Thursday.
Israel has rejected claims it’s committing genocide in Gaza, arguing that it’s preventing its conflict in opposition to Hamas in self-defense. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 individuals and taking greater than 250 hostages.
Google Cloud and Israel
Google Cloud’s contract with the Israeli authorities dates again to 2021, when the corporate announced that it had been chosen to supply “public cloud companies to assist tackle the nation’s challenges inside the public sector, together with in healthcare, transportation, and training.”
However the protests adopted a report in Time journal earlier this month, citing an inner firm doc, that Israel’s Ministry of Protection is a Google Cloud buyer.
In line with Time, the ministry has its personal safe entry level to Google-provided computing infrastructure, which might permit it to retailer and course of knowledge, and entry synthetic intelligence companies. Earlier this yr, the ministry additionally sought consulting help from Google to increase its Google Cloud entry, Time reported.
No Tech for Apartheid stated the article confirmed that Google had “constructed customized instruments” for the Ministry of Protection and had “doubled down on contracting” with Israel’s army because the conflict broke out.
The Google spokesperson stated Google Cloud “helps quite a few governments world wide, together with the Israeli authorities.”
“Now we have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads operating on our industrial cloud by Israeli authorities ministries, who comply with adjust to our Phrases of Service and Acceptable Use Coverage. This work just isn’t directed at extremely delicate, categorized, or army workloads related to weapons or intelligence companies,” the spokesperson added.
Individually, Google confirmed that it’s making an unspecified variety of recent layoffs as a part of an inner reorganization. The job cuts is not going to be company-wide, and impacted workers will be capable to apply for different open roles throughout Google.
Google laid off lots of of workers earlier this year, including to a wave of job cuts within the tech and media industries, together with at Amazon, Vice and the Los Angeles Occasions.
This story has been up to date with extra info.
Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.