28 Google workers sacked after demonstrations against significant tech deal with Israel

Google has let go of 28 workers after they protested against the technology Google is giving to the Israeli government during the Gaza war. This has made the situation even more tense around the controversial deal.

The problem at Google is about a project called “Project Nimbus” which is a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government by Google and Amazon.

The protests are mostly being arranged by a group called No Tech For Apartheid. Google says Nimbus is not being used in weapons or intelligence gathering.

Google said they fired 28 people because their behavior was not acceptable, it stopped other people from doing their work and made the environment scary. The company in Mountain View, California, said it is still looking into what happened during the protests. This means that more employees might still lose their jobs.

No Tech For Apartheid wrote in a blog that Google was lying about what happened during a “peaceful sit-in” in its offices. They said that many other workers who weren’t protesting supported the sit-in.

No Tech For Apartheid says that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the harmful Israeli government and military more than its own workers. This is a clear act of retaliation.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post on Thursday that employees will have to be more careful as the company works harder to make its AI technology better. This is an important time for the industry and for people.

“This is a place for work, not for causing trouble with coworkers or making them feel scared, trying to use the company for personal reasons, or arguing about things that cause problems or talking about politics,” Pichai wrote. “This is a very important moment for our company and we can’t afford to be distracted. ”

Some Google workers are mad about a contract in the cloud computing division. It is managed by Thomas Kurian, a former Oracle executive.

Kurian has been leading Google’s cloud computing team, which is now one of the company’s fastest growing. They made $33 billion in revenue last year, which is 26% more than in 2022. Many different companies and governments from all over the world use Google’s cloud computing services.

Google employees have sometimes protested angrily about the other projects the company is doing and have also expressed worries about how they are making artificial intelligence.

One group of Google workers protested and as a result, Google stopped working with the US military on a project called “Project Maven” in 2018. This project involved helping the military by analyzing videos.

Despite some concerns from within the company, Google has continued to be successful and make money. It makes most of its money from ads on the internet. Its main search engine is a big part of this.

Alphabet Inc, which is Google’s parent company, made a profit of $74 billion last year and now has 182,000 employees around the world. This is 83,000 more employees than in 2018 when it stopped working on Project Maven