Google announced on Thursday that it had fired 28 employees who participated in protests against the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.
The Alphabet subsidiary stated that a few protesting employees disrupted work at unspecified office locations, violating company policies and impeding the work of others.
After conducting individual investigations, Google terminated the employment of the 28 employees involved and pledged to continue investigating and taking appropriate action.
In response, workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign condemned the terminations as “flagrant retaliation” and noted that even employees who did not directly participate in the protests were fired.
They argued that the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, supports the development of military tools by Israel.
Despite this, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract does not involve highly sensitive or military-related workloads.
Protests within Google are not uncommon. In 2018, employees successfully pressured the company to cancel Project Maven, a contract with the US military aimed at analyzing aerial drone imagery for potential military use.
