Google has fired 50 employees after protests over Israel cloud deal, organizers say

Google has fired an additional 20 workers that it says were involved in protests last week over the company’s cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government, bringing the total number of workers fired to 50, according to the group organizing the demonstrations. No Tech for Apartheid, the organizers of the protest at Google offices last Tuesday, said in a statement Monday evening that Google had fired an additional 20 workers, on top of the 30 workers terminated last week. Google had conducted an investigation into the “physical disruption inside our buildings on April 16,” the spokesperson said. “Our investigation into these events is now concluded, and we have terminated the employment of additional employees who were found to have been directly involved in disruptive activity,” the Google spokesperson added. Last week, in the wake of the protests at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai sent a company-wide memo to staffers urging them to keep “politics” out of the workplace. The chief executive told workers that “this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers.” Pichai went on to urge Googlers to not “fight over disruptive issues or debate politics” in the workplace.