Google has fired an employee who publicly protested the company's involvement with the Israeli military.
The incident occurred during the "Mind the Tech" conference in New York City on Monday when Barak Regev, the managing director of Google Israel, was giving a lecture, reported CNBC.
In the middle of Mr Regev's speech, a former Google Cloud engineer stood up, declaring, "I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”
He added that "Project Nimbus puts Palestinian community members in danger," referring to Google's $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli military and government for cloud services.
“No cloud for apartheid,” the employee yelled, before being escorted out.
The firing was confirmed by Google in response to initial reports by CNBC. Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson explained, "Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation - interfering with an official company-sponsored event."
“This behaviour is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, "No Tech For Apartheid," an organisation opposing Project Nimbus, released a statement regarding the firing of the Google engineer who protested the project.
“Google's aims are clear: The corporation is trying to silence workers to hide their moral failings. Google is enabling the world's first AI-powered genocide through Project Nimbus. Through this contract, Google and Amazon are aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid state and genocidal campaign in Gaza against Palestinians. Instead of cleaning up its own house, and dropping its contract with a genocidal regime, Google is punching down on its own workers,” the organisation wrote.
It continued, “As a Cloud Software Engineer on critical technology that enables Project Nimbus to run on sovereign Israeli data centres, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labour. They spoke from a deep belief that truly ethical engineering must account for the impact on communities around the world.”
The Google employee was asked how he was feeling after getting fired, to which he responded, "Proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide."