Since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, Google’s provision of technology to the Israeli government has sparked protests among employees, and on Tuesday (23rd), the company once again terminated at least 20 protesting employees. The total number of employees fired could exceed 50.
According to media reports, the “Project Nimbus” is a $1.2 billion contract signed between Google and Amazon in 2021, aimed at providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.
Last week, Google employees held sit-in protests at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. Google stated that a minority of protesting employees entered some office locations and disrupted work there. After Google called the police, arrests were made.
Google immediately initiated an internal investigation and fired 28 employees based on the investigation results. Google also stated that they would continue to investigate and take action as needed.
According to an Associated Press report on Tuesday, citing a leftist group organizing the protests, Google fired 30 employees last week, higher than the initially announced 28 people. On Tuesday night, Google once again fired “over 20” employees, including “onlookers” during the protests.
Google has rebuffed the group’s claims, stating that they carefully verified that “every person fired was personally and clearly involved in the destructive activities within our building.”
Google also stated that after collecting detailed information from employees who experienced “interference with personal rights” during the investigation, they found that more employees were fired for using masks and not wearing employee badges to conceal their identities. The company did not specify how many people were fired.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai had previously stated in a blog post on the 18th that as the company intensifies efforts to improve artificial intelligence technology, employees affecting the company’s operations will be strictly regulated.
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