Several Google Employees Arrested In Protest Over $1.2B Israel Contract: Report

Late Tuesday, several Alphabet Inc. GOOG Google employees were reportedly arrested and placed on administrative leave following staging 10-hour sit-ins at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, to protest the $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel.

The pro-Palestinian employees, who are affiliated with a group called No Tech For Apartheid, posted several videos and live streams of the protests, which included the moment they were issued final warnings and arrested by local police for trespassing, reported New York Post.

The protesters demanded the company’s withdrawal from the $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract — in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.

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Notably, the workers took over Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale by wearing traditional Arab headscarves.

The police arrested a total of nine protesters, and the employees who participated in the protest are already facing disciplinary action.

As per the report, a Google spokesperson said the protests “were part of a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at Google.”

“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action.” 

The report quoted an NYPD spokesperson, who said the protest “involved approximately 50 participants” in total and confirmed “four arrests were made for trespassing inside the Google building.”

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Price Action: GOOG shares are up 0.94% at $157.46 on the last check Wednesday.

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