By Miles Kruppa
Alphabet's Google said it fired 28 employees who protested this week against the tech giant's cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.
In a companywide email, Vice President for Global Security Chris Rackow said Google dismissed the employees after an investigation found they were involved in the protests at the company's offices in New York and Sunnyvale, Calif.
The protests were "unacceptable, extremely disruptive and made co-workers feel threatened," Rackow wrote in the email.
"The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing," Rackow wrote. "If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again."
A spokeswoman for No Tech for Apartheid, the group that organized the protests, disputed that all of the 28 employees participated in the protest this week, in a statement attributed to Google workers involved in the campaign.
"This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers -- the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders," the statement said.
Israel has denounced claims that it is committing genocide against Palestinians.
Police officers arrested nine Google employees Tuesday following sit-in protests that lasted 10 hours, according to No Tech for Apartheid. Protesters in Sunnyvale occupied an office used by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
At both sites, protesters said they planned to occupy Google office spaces until they were either arrested or Google canceled its contract with Israel. Employees in New York sat down in a common space and unfurled a banner reading, "No Tech for Genocide."
The protests followed an article in Time magazine that said Google provides cloud services for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, citing company documents. Google and Amazon in 2021 signed a contract, known as Nimbus, providing cloud services to the Israeli government.
A Google spokesman said this week that the work "is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."
Write to Miles Kruppa at miles.kruppa@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 18, 2024 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
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