Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. The firings come after 9 employees were suspended and then arrested in New York and California on Tuesday.

In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said that “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.”

He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.”

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[–] 152 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 112 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    They dropped that one quietly a couple of years ago. I guess around the time they started doing contracts for Israel?

    Edit: just Googled what this project nimbus is all about, and it sounds like basically building data centres in Israel, which is fair enough, but it ends with this titbit:

    The terms Israel set for the project contractually forbid Amazon and Google from halting services due to boycott pressure.[7][8] The tech companies are also forbidden from denying service to any particular government entities.[8]

    That's not something you put in your contract unless you're planning on doing something that'll attract boycotts

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    [–] 79 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ok so, “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.”

    But secretly selling services to a genocidal ethnostate does belong in the Google workplace and will be tolerated? Palestinians just don’t matter if you can you make a dollar off of their death and destruction??

    https://time.com/6966102/google-contract-israel-defense-ministry-gaza-war/

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  • [–] 64 points 2 years ago

    One more reason to degoogle.

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  • [–] 61 points 2 years ago*

    "but some are more equal than others"
    -- George Orwell

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I wonder If they were protesting some other interests such as against iran would they have been fired.... Of course not. Countries and companies are bending over backwards for Israel.

    I hope the workers challange this in court.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    I don’t want to take anything away from this protest. It worked about as well as everyone hoped. We’re talking about it in an international community. But come on, there was only one way this was going to end and it was with them getting fired regardless of the country/situation. The employees knew this as well, they probably have other jobs lined out already.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Happy to be almost degoogled when I read such things.

    If only it was easy to get rid of YouTube..

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Looking for more ideas how to boycott Google.

    No longer using Chrome No longer using google search.

    Somehow get off Gmail? Android gapps? Delete reviews?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The Proton suite of apps have 1:1 replacements for the entire Gsuite. Some things are locked behind a subscription (email is fully free), so if you're not into that there's NextCloud if you can/want to self-host. Tuta is also a decent Gmail replacement. As for Gapps, there isn't really any good replacements; MicroG breaks a lot of things and sandboxed google play services is the only other alternative (which is only available on GrapheneOS afaik).

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The Proton suite of apps have 1:1 replacements for the entire Gsuite

    That's just not true, they don't have office applications or video chat. I wish they did though. Also, their storage is pretty expensive.

    Their email is pretty good though, and they have a decent VPN service as well.

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    [–] 35 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    The memo looks like it comes straight out of dystopian novel

    How did we get here

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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago

    Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened

    Maybe... because they feel threatened for themselves and their families?

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago

    "don't be evil"

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    😎👍 joke's on them i fired them from my phone

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    Does the US still have a Fortune 500-wide hiring blacklist for those who publicly criticise Israeli military operations? If so, they may have a hard time finding other employment.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    Glad I've been slowly moving away from being google centric.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    "How dare you protest genocide. The majority of our employees shut the fuck up about us supporting genocide, get in line or get cut."

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I am curious about how hard is the Boycot Divest Sanction movement is going to go down on google knowing that Google is the Internet. they seem to focus on Starbucks and McDonald.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    McDonald’s and Starbucks are grassroots boycotts. On the BDS webpage they state that HP, Siemens, AXA and Puma are primary targets, as well as fruits & vegetables.

    Regarding these boycott lists that exist in the internet they write

    The global nature of today’s economy means that there are thousands of companies that have links to Israel and are complicit to various degrees in Israel’s violations of international law. However, for our movement to have real impact we need our consumer boycotts to be easy to explain, have wide appeal and the potential for success. That’s why globally, while we call for divestment from all companies implicated in Israel's human rights violations, we focus our boycott campaigns on a select few strategic targets. We also encourage the principle of context sensitivity, whereby activists in any given context decide what best to target and how, in line with BDS guidelines. There is a lot of information online claiming that some large companies give money to Israel, some of which turns out to be false. BDS has built a reputation for strictly adhering to established facts and producing the most accurate information.

    Google would obviously seem like a relevant target given this explanation and their current targets. At the same time, I can also only imagine that it would be more about pressurizing companies to move away from GCP and pressurizing Google to stop the collaboration with the occupation.

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    [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    Didn't expected Google to fire so many of the protesters :(

    Here's your place Google, good riddance! : https://killedbygoogle.com/

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  • [–] [B] 12 points 2 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.

    Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.

    In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said that “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.” You can read the full memo at the bottom of this story.

    He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing.

    In a response statement, the “No Tech for Apartheid” group behind the protests called Google’s firings a “flagrant act of retaliation.”

    “In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a post on Medium.


    The original article contains 303 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Every employee is bound by the Software Engineering code of ethics.

    So does this mean Google has abandoned this.

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    [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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