Google employees protest over company's ties with Israel

Protesting the company’s ties with Israel, Google employees held sit-ins at two of the tech giant's offices in California and New York City.

The Tuesday protests were led by a group called “No Tech For Apartheid,” which says it demands that Google and Amazon “drop their Nimbus contract with the Israeli government & military.”

In Sunnyvale, California, protesters pledged to stay until Google ends its $1.2 billion contract with Amazon, which would provide cloud services and data centres to Israel for the Nimbus project.

The protest was livestreamed on the group's Twitch channel.

About 10 hours into the protests, police arrested groups of employees in both New York and California, the group reported on X.

The protests also coincide with Israel’s continuing offensive on Gaza, which since last Oct. 7 has taken nearly 34,000 lives.

The Nimbus project

Nimbus includes a cloud and machine learning system that enables data storage, collection, analysis, motif and feature identification from data, and prediction of potential data and motifs.

A $1.2 billion contract for the project was signed in April 2021 between Israel and Google and Amazon.

Israel announced in April 2021 that Google and Amazon won the massive state tender, allowing Israel to establish its local cloud storage server centres.

The system can collect all data sources provided by Israel and its military, including databases, resources, and even live observation sources such as street and drone cameras.

Critics argue that the project could help Israel continue its apartheid-like system of oppression, domination, and segregation of the Palestinian people.