Google has laid off 28 employees following protests over the technology the web company supplies to the Israeli government within the Gaza war, further escalating tensions over a sensitive deal.
The layoffs, confirmed by Google late Wednesday, got here a day after nine employees were arrested in sit-in protests at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, after the corporate called police.
The dissent rocking Google centers on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion deal signed in 2021 that calls for Google and Amazon to offer cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.
The protests are mainly organized by a bunch called No Tech For Apartheid. According to Google, Nimbus just isn’t used for weapons or information gathering.
In an announcement, Google attributed the firing of the 28 employees to “completely unacceptable behavior” that prevented some staff from doing their jobs and created a threatening atmosphere. The Mountain View, California-based company added that it was still investigating what happened throughout the protests, suggesting that much more staff may very well be laid off.
In a blog post, No Tech For Apartheid accused Google of lying about what happened in its offices when it staged a “peaceful sit-in” that received overwhelming support from other staff who didn’t participate within the protest.
“This blatant retaliation is a clear sign that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” No Tech For Apartheid claimed.
Without naming a selected incident, Google CEO Sundar Pichai suggested in a blog post Thursday that employees are being kept on a brief leash as the corporate continues its efforts to enhance its AI technology at a pivotal moment within the industry and possibly humanity intensified.
“This is a business and not a place where one can act in a way that upsets colleagues or makes them feel unsafe, to try to use the company as a personal platform or to argue about disturbing issues or about politics debate,” Pichai wrote. “This is too important a moment as a company to allow ourselves to be distracted.”
Under Kurian's leadership, cloud computing has turn out to be considered one of Google's fastest-growing businesses, with revenue of $33 billion last yr, up 26% from 2022. In addition, quite a few private sector corporations are also purchasing Google's cloud computing services to governments world wide.
Google employees have usually staged offended protests against other deals the corporate is working on and have also raised ethical concerns in regards to the way the corporate develops artificial intelligence.
One of the sooner worker revolts led to Google deciding in 2018 to finish a contract with the US Department of Defense called Project Maven, which involved helping the armed forces analyze military videos.
But Google continues to thrive despite internal concerns about how the corporate makes a few of its money. Its revenue comes primarily from digital promoting sold through an Internet empire whose mainstay relies on its dominant search engine.
Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., made $74 billion in profits last yr and now employs about 182,000 people worldwide – about 83,000 more people than in 2018, when it abandoned Project Maven.
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