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Speaking out against Google, more than a hundred pro-Palestinian protesters convened in Mountain View on Tuesday morning demanding that the tech behemoth cut ties with the Israeli government and military.
Organized under the hashtag of #NoTechForGenocide, the rally took place near Charleston Park, with the intent to disrupt the Google I/O conference – a conference that is expected to draw thousands of developers as well as the company’s top executives.
The protest targeted Google’s contracts with the Israeli government, claiming that its artificial intelligence and cloud computing services abet the Israeli military and has contributed to the massive bloodshed and surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza.
Since Oct. 7, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children according to the Associated Press.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Specifically, the protesters demanded that Google and Amazon end what they called “profiteering” by revoking a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus.
“As we stand here in Mountain View, as we speak, Google’s cloud infrastructure and AI tools are being used to perpetrate a genocide,” said Ariel Koren, a former Google employee who was part of the ethical AI team before she left more than a year ago. Koren said she believes she was ousted from Google because of her opposition to Project Nimbus.
“It is not only about harming and killing people in Palestine, but rather using Palestine as a testing ground to train these AI tools and systems,” she said, adding that she believes the technology was going to be replicated in other parts of the world for the mass surveillance and oppression of civilian populations.
Behind Koren, a crowd of protesters chanted, “We won’t stop ‘til Nimbus gets dropped,” while holding banners in opposition to Google’s involvement with the Israeli government.
Google security diverted a long line of conference attendees to a different entrance to avoid the demonstrators.
Another large crowd, also part of the #NoTechForGenocide movement, converged at the Amphitheatre Parkway and Shoreline Boulevard intersection, holding signs, chanting and playing drums as vehicles rolled in for the conference.
Mountain View resident Roni Zeiger said he was participating in the rally to express his opposition to the militarized use of Google’s technology. Zeiger worked for the Google Health team for six years, from 2006 until 2012, he said.
“Our goal on that team was to figure out how to use Google’s wide array of innovative technologies to improve public health, and it feels like the way Google’s technologies are being used today, in particular in Palestine, is exactly the opposite. And that’s not okay,” he said.
The mass rally follows on the heels of the recent firing of 50 workers who staged sit-ins at Google offices in Sunnyvale and New York to protest the company’s contracts with the Israeli government.