People from Google in Sunnyvale went into the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
Google fired 28 workers after they refused to leave their jobs during a long protest at the company’s offices in Sunnyvale and New York.
Project Nimbus is a cloud computer deal that Google and Amazon made with the Israeli government and military three years ago. The protests were in response to the deal. According to reports, the controversial project includes giving Israel advanced AI and machine learning technology. Google and Amazon are said to be legally bound by strict terms that prevent them from giving in to boycott pressure, which means they have to keep providing services to Israel no matter what.
Problems With Conflict
Since 2021, there have been many protests and public scoldings within the companies. But now that the Israel-Palestine conflict is getting worse after Hamas’s attacks in October, this is spreading to the employees of companies that are seen as not only helping Israel but also making money off of it.
At the most recent protests, people protested outside of Google’s offices in Sunnyvale and New York, as well as Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. But they went one step further and went inside the buildings, including into the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
As part of the sit-in protest in New York City, Hasan Ibraheem, a software engineer at Google, told TechCrunch that by giving the Israeli military cloud and AI infrastructure, Google is “directly implicated in the genocide of the Palestinian people.” Ibraheem made the statement through the anti-big-tech advocacy group Justice Speaks.
Ibraheem said, “It’s my job to do everything I can to get out of this contract, even if Google acts like nothing is wrong.” It makes me sick to think about working for a company that directly builds things that are used for killing. We’ve sent complaints to the leaders, but they haven’t responded. We’ll make it so they can’t ignore us any longer. We’re going to make a lot of noise. A huge number of Google employees don’t know that the company has a deal with the Israeli Defense Forces (IOF). A lot of people don’t know that their coworkers have been in danger because they are Muslim, Palestinian, or Arab and speak out. A lot of people don’t understand how involved their business is. We need to make sure they do it.
Nine Google employees were also arrested and thrown out of the company’s buildings against their will. Five of them were in Sunnyvale and four were in New York. In a separate statement, Justice Speaks spoke for the so-called “Nimbus nine” protesters and said that they had asked to speak with Kurian but were not allowed to.
Here’s the whole sentence:
“Last night, Google decided to arrest us, even though we work for the company, instead of listening to our worries about Project Nimbus, its $1.2 billion cloud computing deal with Israel. People sitting in Thomas Kurian’s office kept asking to talk to the CEO of Google Cloud, but we were turned down each time. Since the contract was signed three years ago, we have tried many times to talk to Google executives about Project Nimbus through official company methods, such as town halls, forums, petitions with over 1,000 signatures, and direct messages from worried employees.
Google executives haven’t heard our worries about our moral responsibility for how our technology affects people, the harm this contract does to our health and safety at work, and the hostile, harassing, and bullying environment inside the company. Google, on the other hand, is very strict about speech inside the company and allows Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers to be harassed, threatened, bullied, silenced, and censored.
People who work have the right to know how their time is being spent and to have a say in making sure that the technology they create is not used to hurt people. People who work have the right to go to work without fear, worry, or stress because their work could be used to power a killing. Google is taking away these basic rights from us, which is why we sat in at Google offices across the country yesterday.
In the meantime, Google keeps lying to the public, its employees, and the media. According to Google, Project Nimbus is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” This was still true yesterday. But news stories from TIME Magazine show that’s not true. Since the beginning of Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza, Google has even more contracts with the Israeli Occupational Forces and has made tools just for Israel’s Ministry of Defense. By telling lies over and over again, Google is showing disrespect to customers, the media, and most importantly, us, its employees.
We won’t keep quiet about Google’s outright lies. A lot of Google employees have joined the group No Tech for Apartheid in asking the company to stop working on Project Nimbus. Google has tried to shut us up and ignore our worries, but we will not give up. We will keep working together and fighting until Google drops Project Nimbus and stops supporting Israel’s killings and apartheid state in Palestine.
A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company did fire 28 people and will “continue to investigate and take action” if necessary.
Also Read: Appen Loses $126 Million Contract With Google
A spokesperson for Google said, “These protests were part of a long-running campaign by a group of organizations and people who don’t work at Google.” “A few employee protesters came into a few of our locations and caused problems.” Physically getting in the way of other employees’ work and stopping them from getting into our buildings is against our rules and is completely unacceptable. After being asked to leave several times and resisting, police were called to remove them to keep the office safe.
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