Google workers protesting at Sunnyvale site arrested
Sunnyvale police arrested five Google employees who refused to leave a company building Tuesday during a protest demanding an end to its work with the Israeli government.
The arrests are the latest chapter in employees’ longstanding campaign against the company’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with Israel that has accelerated since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s military retaliation.
The action came one day after 38 demonstrators against the war in Gaza were arrested while blocking either the Golden Gate Bridge or Interstate 880 — disruptions that drew swift condemnation from Gov. Gavin Newsom and others.
About 80 people participated in the protest at the Google building on Borregas Avenue, Sunnyvale police spokesperson Dzanh Le said Wednesday. Most protesters dispersed shortly after noon, but five remained inside the facility and refused to leave, Le said.
“After being admonished by Google representatives” and police, the protesters were arrested without incident on charges of criminal trespassing and booked at the local jail around 6:30 p.m., Le said.
The employees protesting in Sunnyvale were sitting inside the office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, according to Jane Chung of Justice Speaks, which released a statement on behalf of the protesters.
“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a couple of our locations,” a Google spokesperson said Wednesday, adding that their actions violated company policy. “These employees were put on administrative leave and their access to our systems was cut.”
Employees have long criticized Google for its ties to the Israeli government, pointing to reports in Time and other publications showing that Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Protesters last year disrupted a Google Cloud conference hosted at Moscone Center and later staged a “die-in” outside the company’s downtown San Francisco offices.
“As a software engineer in Google Cloud, it is horrifying to think that the code I write could be used by the Israeli Military in the first ever AI powered genocide,” William Van Der Laar, a Google employee based in Sunnyvale, said Wednesday in the statement released by Justice Speaks. Van Der Laar was not among those arrested.