Google Terminates Protesters in Wake of Israeli Government Contract Dispute

On Thursday, Google announced that it had terminated 28 employees who staged a protest in an office space for hours against the company’s contract with the Israeli government. The decision came after internal investigations, with more investigations underway that could result in additional measures, according to a Google spokesperson.

The protests were led by a group called “No Tech for Apartheid,” who occupied the office of Google Cloud storage service manager Thomas Kurian in Sunnyvale, California, for ten hours. Several Google employees were arrested during the protest, as shown in video recordings shared online. Similar protests occurred in New York and Seattle.

Google referred to the protesters as a “small number” of employees disrupting operations at multiple Google locations. However, the activists were against the collaboration between technology giants Google and Amazon with the Israeli government, totaling $1.2 billion. They cited a Time magazine report from April that mentioned Google billing over $1 million to the Israeli Defense Ministry for consulting services in a draft contract.

A Google spokesperson emphasized that the company works with numerous governments, including Israel, but the services provided are not related to military or intelligence activities. The decision by Google to terminate its employees is likely to spark further controversy and debate about corporate responsibility and political activism in the tech industry.