DIGIVESTASI - A total of 28 Google employees who were sent to defend Palestine have been fired. The company's decision follows a series of protests from employees over Google providing cloud and AI to support the Israeli government and military.  The cloud and AI contract in question is called Project Nimbus and is worth $1.2 billion. Google and Amazon will provide cloud computing services, AI tools, data centers and other cloud infrastructure to Israel. 
CNBC International cited an internal memo regarding the layoffs. The memo was written by Chris Rakow, Google's vice president of global security.

"After conducting an investigation, today we fired 28 employees who were found to be involved (protests). We will continue the investigation and take action as necessary," Rakow said on Friday (April 19, 2024). Rakow said the protesters occupied the premises, damaged property and disrupted the work of other employees. In fact, he said, the employee's actions threatened his coworkers. "Their behavior is unacceptable, very disturbing and makes colleagues feel threatened," he said. 

Nine employees were previously arrested after protesting at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. They were charged with trespassing on Tuesday (April 16, 2024) local time. 

The office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian was also the target of employee protests. After being there for nine hours, they were arrested. Some of the arrested employees claimed that they could not log into their accounts or offices. In addition, he was also given administrative leave and asked to wait for news from Human Resources before returning to work. 

Regarding the cooperation protest, a Google spokesperson said the company's cloud services support governments around the world. Its work also does not involve classified, sensitive or military matters. 
"Google Cloud supports many governments around the world in the countries where we operate, including the Israeli government. "Our cloud computing services are generally available," he said. 

The Google spokesperson added: "This work does not address sensitive, classified or military matters related to weapons or intelligence."

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