- Protesters press Google to ends its contract with Amazon for cloud and machine learning project

By Muhammed Yasin Gungor

ISTANBUL (AA) - Protesting the company’s ties with Israel, Google employees held sit-ins at two of the tech giant's offices in California and New York City.

The Tuesday protests were led by a group called “No Tech For Apartheid,” which says it demands that Google and Amazon “drop their Nimbus contract with the Israeli government & military.”

In Sunnyvale, California, protesters pledged to stay until Google ends its $1.2 billion contract with Amazon, which would provide cloud services and data centers to Israel for the Nimbus project.

The employees also occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in California and the 10th floor of Google’s New York offices.

The sit-in was accompanied by outdoor protests at Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Stating that he was speaking as a “Jewish Googler,” a Google staffer in New York said that at the protests, “I sat in as a Jew, because 'never again' means never again for anyone.”

“I sat in as a descendent of Holocaust survivors and Holocaust victims,” he added, laying out similarities between the World War I genocide of Jews and others and the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Another Google employee said on X: "Not another nickel, not another dime, not another tech for genocide. We will not stand by as our work aids and abets the apartheid." 

The protest was livestreamed on the group's Twitch channel.

About 10 hours into the protests, police arrested groups of employees in both New York and California, the group reported on X.

The protests also coincide with Israel’s continuing offensive on the Gaza Strip, which since last Oct. 7 has taken nearly 34,000 lives.

- Nimbus project

Nimbus includes a cloud and machine learning system that enables data storage, collection, analysis, motif and feature identification from data, and prediction of potential data and motifs.

A $1.2 billion contract for the project was signed in April 2021 between Israel and Google and Amazon.

Israel announced in April 2021 that Google and Amazon won the massive state tender, allowing Israel to establish its local cloud storage server centers.

The system can collect all data sources provided by Israel and its military, including databases, resources, and even live observation sources such as street and drone cameras.

Critics argue that the project could help Israel continue its apartheid-like system of oppression, domination, and segregation of the Palestinian people.