Google Fires 28 Employees Following Protest Against Israeli Cloud Contract

(RTTNews) - Google terminated 28 employees who engaged in a 10-hour sit-in protest at the company's offices on Wednesday, per an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

This development follows the arrest of nine Google workers on trespassing charges the previous night, after staging a sit-in at the offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, which included a protest at the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. It remains uncertain if all nine arrested employees were among those who were fired.

Google's Vice President of Global Security, Chris Rackow, conducted an internal investigation which led to the termination of the employees involved in the protest. "They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers," Rackow wrote in the memo, which Google confirmed was accurate. "Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened."

The protest demanded the cancellation of a $1.2 billion contract known as "Project Nimbus," which involves providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military. The demonstrators believed that the technology provided by Google would be used to support human rights violations and perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, Google has not yet made any comment on the matter.