New York, USA – Google has announced the termination of 28 employees due to their involvement in protests against the company’s $1.2 billion cloud contract with the Israeli government. The employees staged sit-ins at various office locations, obstructing work for more than eight hours. According to Google, a small group of pro-Palestine employees disrupted operations at unspecified office sites, including the office of the chief technology officer of Google Cloud.

The protests included employees holding signs with messages such as “No cloud apartheid,” “Googlers against genocide,” and “Don’t be evil, stop retaliation,” referencing Google’s previous corporate slogan. Police in New York and Sunnyvale made several trespassing arrests in response to the demonstrations. Around 50 protesters occupied Google’s New York office, while approximately 80 protested in Sunnyvale.

In a statement, Google cited the protesters’ actions as a violation of company policies and deemed the behavior as unacceptable. Chris Rackow, Google’s vice-president of global security, reinforced this message in an email to employees, warning that conduct breaching company policies would not be tolerated.

The terminations resulted from individual investigations conducted by Google, with the company emphasizing its commitment to continuing investigations and taking appropriate actions as necessary. In response to the layoffs, a group of Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign condemned the terminations as a “flagrant act of retaliation.” The group highlighted the dismissals of employees who did not directly participate in the protests as well.

The protesting faction raised concerns over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com to provide cloud services to the Israeli government. They believe the contract supports the development of military tools by the Israeli government. However, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract does not involve highly sensitive or military-related workloads.

Protests at Google are not unprecedented, with past instances of employee activism influencing company decisions. In 2018, Google employees successfully pressured the company to cancel a contract with the US military for Project Maven, designed for analyzing aerial drone imagery. Additionally, the company faced a significant walkout in 2018 in response to internal mishandling of sexual harassment allegations.