Workers Call on Google Leadership to Drop Nimbus and Publicly Condemn Genocide in Gaza

October 18, 2023

We are Google workers calling on CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian to put immediate end to our company’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

More than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed in the last 11 days of bombardment from Israel — the highest death toll in decades of Israeli occupation and a number that grows by several hundred every day.

Mosques, markets, schools, and hospitals have been flattened. Water, food, electricity, and aid have been cut off, leaving thousands at immediate risk. More than 50 entire families have been wiped out — every living relative killed. Israel has directed all 1.1 million Gazans in the north of the strip to flee south or risk death from above, a forced displacement that violates international law and is an established precursor to mass extermination. As it does so, it has reportedly bombed exit routes, escape convoys, and on Tuesday the al-Ahli Baptist hospital, killing hundreds. This week, Israeli officials said they were fighting “human animals” and expressed intent to “turn Gaza into a city of tents with not a single building left standing.”

This is genocide. By supplying artificial intelligence and other technology to Israel, Google is complicit in the mass surveillance that enables the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians, the root cause of the unfolding violence.

This is not the first time Google workers have spoken out. Over 1,100 of us signed a 2021 petition demanding that Google drop its Project Nimbus plans, and we were supported by almost 50,000 people across the world. Hundreds of Google and Amazon workers protested outside Google offices in New York City, San Francisco, Durham, and Seattle last fall to demand both companies cancel their contracts with Israel. We did it again this August; Google workers and community members disrupted the Google Cloud conference by occupying the entire conference plaza.

Google’s leadership has ignored us each time. It has ignored the hundreds of Google workers who have spoken up internally about this unethical contract, including many Palestinian Googlers who have voiced their opposition directly, and has even retaliated against workers organizing internally.

Sundar Pichai and Google’s leadership writ large have been publicly silent on the unfolding genocide, voicing public concerns for Israelis but saying nothing about Palestinians. Internally, Sundar has quietly expressed sympathy to Google for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities, but has given no public statements of solidarity or sympathy.

Google's position as a supplier to the Israeli military and government means that by far the most important thing Google can do to disrupt this bloodshed is to end our relationship with the Israeli military.

We cannot stand by any longer. We demand that Google cancel its Project Nimbus contract and immediately cease doing business with the Israeli apartheid government and military.

We demand that Sundar Pichai, Thomas Kurian, and other Google leadership issue a public condemnation of the ongoing genocide in the strongest possible terms.

We strongly urge workers across Alphabet, and our fellow tech workers around the world, to make their voices heard: Demand that your companies speak out against this genocide and cease supporting Israeli occupation and apartheid.

Anything less is acquiescence and complicity from one of the world’s most powerful companies and one of its most privileged workforces.