During the presentation, the engineer protested against the Nimbus project, which is an Israeli government contract to access cloud services from Google and Amazon (social networking sites).

Google fired an employee who publicly objected to the company's work for the Israeli military.

During a presentation by a Google executive in Israel on Monday, the former Google engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that supports genocide or surveillance.”

Google confirmed the expulsion, which was first reported by CNBC, in an email to The Verge.

“Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a co-worker who was giving a presentation, interfering with an official company-sponsored event,” Google spokesman Billy Thompson said in an emailed statement. “This behavior is not acceptable, regardless of Regardless of the issue, the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”

The incident occurred at Mind the Tech, an annual Israeli technology conference in New York, during a presentation by Barak Regev, Google's managing director in Israel.

The engineer was protesting Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for access to cloud services from Google and Amazon.

BREAKING—PRO-PALESTINE @googlecloud ENGINEER DISRUPTS @Google ISRAEL DIRECTOR AT GOOGLE-SPONSORED ISRAELI TECH CONFERENCE IN NYC.

The worker demanded that Google STOP using worker labor to power genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

#NoTechForApartheid pic.twitter.com/t2mqCqFFay

— No Tech For Apartheid (@NoTechApartheid) March 4, 2024

The employee said, "The Nimbus project exposes members of the Palestinian community to danger."

“No to cloud apartheid.”

Before the employee is escorted out of the presentation by security personnel.

Google faced criticism over its involvement in Project Nimbus when the contract was signed in 2021. Hundreds of Google and Amazon employees published an open letter to speak out against the deal, saying the technologies "allow for further surveillance and illegal data collection on Palestinians."

No Tech For Apartheid, an anti-Nimbus organization, published a statement about the engineer's expulsion on Friday.

“Google’s goals are clear: The company is trying to silence workers to hide their ethical failings,” the organization said, adding, “As a cloud software engineer in the critical technology field that enables Project Nimbus to operate on sovereign Israeli data centers, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about... "The direct and violent effects of his work."

Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas last October, employees have organized several protests at the company's offices in San Francisco in objection to the cloud services contract, and more than 600 employees signed a letter urging Google to stop sponsoring the Mind the Tech conference.

This is according to a report by Wired.

Source: websites