Google terminates 28 employees for protest of Israeli cloud contract
(Reuters) - Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government.
The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations.
"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company said in a statement.
Google said it had concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue to investigate and take action as needed.
In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google fired.
The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, supports the development of military tools by the Israeli government.
