Some Google employees were fired after protesting the company's contract with Israel. After the protests, CEO Sundar Pichai said workers should not “try to use the company as a personal platform.”
Google fires employees who protested the contract with the Israeli government
Google has fired dozens after protests over its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract with Amazon, which provides cloud services to the Israeli government.
Google has fired more than 50 employees following in-office protests over the company's cloud computing deals with Israel, according to an activist group representing former employees.
There is no technology for apartheid Google has protested cloud computing contracts that Google and Amazon have had with the Israeli government since 2021. Google fired more than 20 employees on Monday night, bringing the total number of firings to more than 50 since last week, the group said. in Statement published on Medium.
The shootings came next Nine employees were arrested On April 16, during a sit-in at Google's offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, The Washington Post reported.
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Google: Fired employees “directly involved in subversive activities”
Google said it fired a small number of employees who participated in the protest, disrupting work at its offices.
“Our investigation into these events has now concluded, and we have terminated the employment of additional employees found to be directly involved in disruptive activity,” Google said in a statement to USA TODAY. “To reiterate, each of those terminated was personally and definitively involved in subversive activity within our buildings. We have carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this.”
No Technology for Apartheid challenged Google's descriptions, calling the segregations “an aggressive and desperate act of retaliation… including by uninvolved bystanders during last week's protests.”
The protests at Google — like those at Columbia University and other colleges across the United States — arose in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the ensuing humanitarian crisis there. The Israeli action came in response to a decision in October. An attack by Hamas on Israel on February 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people.
Controversy over cloud computing
There is no technology for apartheid cities Reports of time Which suggests that the $1.2 billion cloud computing contract that Israel awarded to Google and Amazon in 2021 – known as Project Nimbus – may give the Israeli Ministry of Defense access to cloud computing infrastructure.
Google has maintained that its cloud computing deal is for civilian purposes only.
“We have made it very clear that the Nimbus contract is intended for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, which agree to abide by our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” the company said in a statement. “This work is not directed to highly sensitive, classified or military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks about the recent protests
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the protests in a company reorganization announcement on April 18 Google blog:
“We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action,” he wrote.
“But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: This is a business, not a place to behave in a way that disrupts or makes co-workers feel unsafe, try to use the company as a personal platform, or fight about disruptive issues or debate politics,” Pichai continued. “A moment that is too important for us as a company to be distracted.”
Google's firing of employees has received attention in the past, including the 2020 firing of a senior artificial intelligence researcher who criticized the company's diversity efforts. Most recently, the company fired a Google Cloud engineer who interrupted a speech by the managing director of Google's Israel business at a technology event in March in New York. CNBC reported.
Contributing: Reuters.
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