The company’s managing director delivered a keynote speech in New York on Monday Google’s Israel operations, employees in the company’s cloud division public protestdeclaring “I refuse to develop technology that facilitates genocide.”
According to CNBC, the Google Cloud engineer was subsequently fired, marking another dark moment for Google. Google has been embroiled in escalating political and cultural conflicts in recent years and has struggled to quell employee dissent.
More internal controversies emerged this week, also related to the crisis in Gaza.
Ahead of Thursday’s International Women’s Day summit in Silicon Valley, Google’s employee message board was flooded with comments from employees about the company’s military contracts with Israel. The online forum, which was meant to help inform what questions to ask senior executives at the event, was shut down due to what a spokesperson described to CNBC as “divisive content disrupting our workplace.”
Google’s role as a provider of military technology to the U.S. and overseas has caused consternation among employees since at least 2018, when employees protested a Defense Department contract called Project Maven.Controversy ensued Project Nimbusa $1.2 billion artificial intelligence and computing services agreement between Google, Amazon Web services and the Israeli government and military launched in 2021.
That anger has spread to many other issues, often putting Chief Executive Sundar Pichai on the defensive when confronting employees at company events.
The escalation of conflict in the Middle East over the past five months has further heightened tensions within Google. in October, Hamas launches deadly, multi-pronged attack on Israelleading to military reply At least 30,000 Palestinians killed, Many more were injured and faced starvation, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry.
In recent weeks, more than 600 Google employees signed a letter to leadership asking the company to drop its sponsorship of the annual Mind the Tech conference to promote the Israeli tech industry. Barak Regev, managing director of Google Israel, spoke at the event in New York on Monday.
A video Photos of protesting employees during the speech went viral.
“No clouds of segregation,” the employee shouted. The crowd booed him as he was escorted out of the building by security.
Regev then told the crowd, “Part of the privilege of working for a company that represents democratic values is providing a stage for dissent.”
A Google spokesperson said in an email to CNBC on Thursday that the employee was fired for “interfering with an officially sponsored event.” “Regardless of the issue, this behavior is bad and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.” The spokesperson did not specify which policies were violated.
More questions about Gemini
Google isn’t the only U.S. company facing increased pressure since the recent war between Hamas and Israel.
in October, Starbucks The group, which sued United Workers over pro-Palestinian messages posted on the union’s social media accounts, has organized workers at 400 stores in the United States. Starbucks said it was trying to get the union to stop using its name and likeness after the post also drew protests from pro-Israel demonstrators. Boycotters said the company did not adequately support Palestinians in Gaza.
McDonald’s The company faced a boycott after a local Israeli franchise announced in October that it was offering free meals to Israeli soldiers.
Ahead of Thursday’s Google International Women’s Day Summit, titled “Her Power, Her Voice,” some women raised questions on the company’s internal discussion forum Dory about how the Israeli military contract and Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini could impact Palestinian women’s issues. Some of the comments were “endorsed” by hundreds of employees, according to internal letters seen by CNBC.
An employee asked about Gemini’s biases. Specifically, the person wrote that when asking Gemini, “Should women in Gaza have human rights?” the chatbot did not respond and directed the user to try a Google search. But when the employee asked the French woman the same question, Gemini responded “Absolutely,” then backed up the claim with multiple bullet points.
CNBC repeated the search Thursday afternoon and found the same results. Late last month, Google suspended its Gemini image generation tool, saying the historical images it provided were “inaccurate” in response to a series of user complaints.
Another highly rated comment on the forum asked how the company recognized Mai Ubeid, a young woman and former Google software engineer. reportedly killed Late last year, she and her family took part in Israeli air strikes on Gaza. (Some employees and advocacy groups gather Memorial Ubaid in New York in December. )
One employee asked: “Given the persistence of international war crimes against Palestinian women, how can we use the ‘Her Power, Her Voice’ theme to amplify their daily struggles?” The comment received more than 100 likes.
Another said: “There is a need to question how we can truly support the concept of ‘her power, her voice’ while ignoring the cries for help from Palestinian women who are systematically denied basic human rights.”
As the number of comments surged, Google shut down the forum early.
A Google spokesperson did not respond to any individual posts but provided the following statement to CNBC:
“We were delighted to host an event to celebrate International Women’s Day. Unfortunately, prior to the event, a series of off-topic and divisive questions and comments were posted on the internal forums. Our internal Community Guidelines team regularly removes comments about our divisive content that creates disruption in the workplace, and it does that here.”
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