Google has announced the termination of 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, and more investigations are underway that could result in additional measures, according to a Google spokesperson on Thursday.
The group “No Tech for Apartheid” took over the office of Google Cloud storage service manager Thomas Kurian in Sunnyvale, California. They occupied the space for ten hours, leading to the arrest of several Google employees 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. The protests are part of a long-term campaign by organizations and individuals mostly not affiliated with Google. 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 in 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.