What Google said on Police actionGoogle employees stage sit-insGoogle sacked an engineer in MarchWhat are Google employees protesting againstSeveral Google employees were reportedly arrested on Tuesday evening at the company’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, after staging sit-ins to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government.
According to a report in Washington Post, nine employees were arrested across both offices.
However, when the employees refuse, the police arrests them.“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action,” said Bailey Tomson, a Google spokesperson.
“These employees were put on administrative leave, and their access to our systems was cut.
“Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” a Google spokesperson told Time.
What Google said on Police action
Google employees stage sit-ins
Google sacked an engineer in March
What are Google employees protesting against
Several Google employees were reportedly arrested on Tuesday evening at the company’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, after staging sit-ins to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. According to a report in Washington Post, nine employees were arrested across both offices. The report quotes Jane Chung, claimed to be a spokesperson for the protesters.A video said to have been taken by one of the protesters and shared with website shows New York Police Department officers walk into the Google office and tell protesters that they will be arrested if they don’t leave. However, when the employees refuse, the police arrests them.“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action,” said Bailey Tomson, a Google spokesperson. “These employees were put on administrative leave, and their access to our systems was cut. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.”According to the report, "Protesters entered the offices in New York and California around 2 pm Eastern time, vowing to stay there until the company met their demand that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion contract it shares with Amazon to provide cloud services and data centers to the Israeli government." Dozens of Google employees also reportedly rallied outside the company’s offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle.One group of protesters sat in the office of Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian and reportedly remained there for about 10 hours.The employees participating in the sit-ins wore shirts that reportedly said "Drop Project Nimbus".In early March, Google sacked a software engineer who stood up and protested during a speech by Google Israel’s top executive during a conference in New York.Google and Amazon have a cloud computing and artificial intelligence contract with the Israeli government and military known as Project Nimbus. The deal was signed in 2021 and is said to be worth $1.2 billion.According to a recent report in Time magazine, Google told the publication that its Nimbus contract is for workloads related to Israeli government ministries such as finance, health, transportation and education. “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” a Google spokesperson told Time.
