Over the past week Google has dismissed more than 50 of its workers who it claimed had participated in protests denouncing the company’s cloud computing deal with the Israeli government.
The dismissals stem from Google’s investigation into protests held on 16 April, which included sit-ins at Google’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai told employees at the time, in a company-wide memo, that they should not use the company as a “personal platform” or “fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”
However, Jane Chung for No Tech for Apartheid, the group that has campaigned against Google and Amazon’s contracts with the Israeli government, stated: “The corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers and reassert its power over them.”
Google claimed that the workers it has dismissed had each played a part in disrupting its offices, but the workers deny this. Some have claimed that they did not even enter the company’s office on the day of the demonstrations.
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According to the Washington Post, Google has long held a reputation for being the most free and open of the big tech companies in terms of office culture and collaboration. The company celebrated an internal culture in which employees knew what other teams were working on and were encouraged to question the decisions of leaders, it said.
In his memo to workers, Pichai said the company’s openness was a strength but applied to work topics, not politics. “We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action,” he said in the memo, which the company posted online. “But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business.”
Known as Project Nimbus, the joint contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021 is designed to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military. It is worth $1.22 billion.
Google employees have pointed out that understanding how their work will be used is a vital part of being motivated to work at the firm. “It is impossible to feel excited and energised to work when you know your company is providing the Israeli government products that are helping it commit atrocities in Palestine,” said Tina Vachovsky, staff software engineer at Google, in a testimonial published on the No Tech for Apartheid website.
The website has petitioned Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon web services CEO Adam Selipsky, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian to end all ties “with Israeli apartheid and cut the Project Nimbus contract”.
Although Pichai did not specifically mention the Israel-Hamas war in his blog post, he stated that the $1.92 trillion company “is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe.”
Most of the protests over the Israeli actions in Gaza and the US government’s support for the country have come at universities, where collectively hundreds of campaigners have been arrested at institutions such as South California State, Yale, Harvard, Texas and Columbia universities. The day before the Google sit-ins, activists blocked highways, bridges and airport entrances across the US to protest the war in Gaza.
Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the protests as antisemitic but the World Court (the ICJ) will consider allegations brought by South Africa that his government’s actions constitute state-sponsored genocide. Last month the UN Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages held by terrorist group Hamas.
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