Several Google employees were arrested and placed on administrative leave late Tuesday after staging 10-hour sit-ins at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California to protest the company’s $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 — including the moment they were issued final warnings and arrested by local police for trespassing.
A third protest took place in Seattle.
The shocking protests included a complete takeover of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale by workers wearing traditional Arab headscarves.
Kurian’s custom-made, framed Golden State Warriors jersey was visible on the office wall in the background of the live stream.
A total of nine protesters were arrested.
Employees who participated in the protest are already facing disciplinary action.
A Google spokesperson said the Tuesday 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 Google spokesperson said in a statement.
“These employees were put on administrative leave and their access to our systems was cut,” the spokesperson said. “After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.”
The protests come as Google has contended with employee unrest related to the Israel-Hamas war for months.
Last month, Google fired a software engineer who publicly blasted one of the company’s Israel-based executives during a tech conference in New York City.
An NYPD spokesperson said the Tuesday protest “involved approximately 50 participants” in total and confirmed “four arrests were made for trespassing inside the Google building.”
The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said the protest in California “consisted of around 80 participants.”
A total of five protestors who refused to leave the Google office were “arrested without incident for criminal trespassing,” booked and released, a spokesperson added.
A representative for the protesters did not immediately return a request for comment on the arrests.
The protesters have demanded that Google withdraw 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.
Critics are concerned that the technology is being weaponized against Palestinians in Gaza.
Activists within Google’s workforce have ramped up their criticism of the deal in recent months during Israel’s war against Hamas. Israel launched an offensive after Hamas staged a surprise cross-border attack on civilians last Oct. 7.
On Tuesday, the official “No Tech For Apartheid” account tweeted that the employees would “refuse to leave until Google stops powering the genocide in Gaza.”
