Google has fired 28 employees who partook in protests against Project Nimbus, a staggering $1.2 billion collaboration with Amazon that seeks to supply the Israeli regime with AI and cloud services in the wake of “Israel’s” ongoing onslaught in Gaza that has now killed more than 33,000 people in a span of six months. 

The demonstrations organized by the ‘No Tech for Apartheid’ group took place at Google offices in New York City, Seattle and Sunnyvale, California on Tuesday, April 16, 2024. 

Nine individuals were also arrested that same evening, accused of trespassing while they held a sit-in that stretched for close to 10 hours. 

Shortly after the protests, some employees, including the ones who did not participate directly in the sit-in, were notified by Google’s Employee Relations that they were being placed on leave. 

“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” Google said in a statement regarding the protesters.

“After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety. 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,” it added.

The Tech Giant was known for fostering open discussions up until recently, when employee activism led them to tighten up measures.   

John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University, said that under US labor law, employees reserve the right to partake in collective action concerning their working conditions. Tech workers are expected to argue this should grant grounds to allow them to unite together to decide on the utilization of the tools they develop.

“Tech workers are not like other kinds of workers,” he said. “You can make an argument in this case that having some sort of say or control or ability to protest about how their work product is being used is actually a sort of key issue,” Logan said.

Recently, Google negotiated a deal with the Israeli regime to strengthen their partnership during the war on Gaza, which has led to a humanitarian catastrophe, displacing and pushing almost all of Gaza’s 2.2 million people to the brink of famine. 

Google has also provided cloud computing services to the occupation entity for years.

The Israeli Ministry of Security reportedly sought consulting help from Google to broaden its access to Google Cloud, “aiming to enable multiple units to utilize automation technologies.” In a draft contract, Google charged the Israeli Ministry more than $1 million for this consulting service. 

According to Google employees, Project Nimbus would serve the Ministry of Security in the wake of Google’s apparent inability to oversee how the occupation entity will misuse its technology.