Google staffers are locked in an escalating office squabble over the search giant’s business ties with Israel, which include a $1.2 billion agreement to provide cloud services to the Israeli government called “Project Nimbus.”
On Wednesday, a group of Muslim, Palestinian, Arab and “anti-Zionist Jewish” Google staffers published an open letter that demanded the tech behemoth nix the Nimbus contract — even as it accused Israel of committing “genocide” under an “apartheid government and military.”
“We demand that Google stop providing material support to this genocide by canceling its Project Nimbus contract and immediately cease doing business with the Israeli apartheid government and military,” the group said, calling out CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud boss Thomas Kurian.
Critics and activists working at Google have bashed Nimbus since the contract was signed in 2021, claiming it gives Israel tools to covertly monitor Palestine.
Googlers who support Israel meanwhile, have interpreted resistance to Nimbus as hostile, adding that when coworkers bash Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide,” it’s “deeply offensive,” according to accounts from staffers reported by The New York Times.
Three insiders told the Times that a worker was fired after writing on an internal Google message board that Israelis living near Gaza “deserved to be impacted.”
nypost.com/2023/11/08/business/google-staffers-squabble-over-1-2b-contract-with-israel/