The US technology company Google has fired 28 employees for occupying an office space for several hours in protest against the company’s contract with the Israeli government. This decision was made after internal investigations, and further investigations are ongoing which could result in additional measures, according to a Google spokesman on Thursday.
A group known as “No Tech for Apartheid” occupied the office of Google Cloud storage service manager Thomas Kurian in Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday. The activists stated that they remained there for ten hours. Videos published by the activists on the online service X showed police officers arresting several Google employees. Similar protests also took place in New York and Seattle.
Google referred to the protesters as a “small number” of employees who disrupted operations at a few Google locations. The protests are part of a “long-term campaign by a group of organizations and individuals, most of whom do not work at Google.” The activist group was protesting against the cooperation between technology companies Google and Amazon and the Israeli government, which is valued at 1.2 billion US dollars (approximately 1.1 billion euros).
The protesters raised concerns based on a Time magazine report from April, which stated that Google had billed the Israeli Defense Ministry over $1 million for consulting services in a draft contract. A Google spokesman emphasized that Israel is one of “numerous” countries the company collaborates with, and the services provided are not related to military or secret service activities.