The story so far: On June 14, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s speech at Stanford was disrupted as over 100 students walked out in protest. Some carried Palestinian flags, others draped black-and-white patterned keffiyeh as scarves, and they shouted, “Free, free Palestine!”
The students were protesting against Google’s Project Nimbus, a tech contract between the search giant and the Israeli government that is linked with violence against Palestinian civilians.
What is Project Nimbus?
Project Nimbus is a technology contract between the Israeli government and Google and Amazon. It is worth over $1 billion. In May 2021, Google said the agreement would deliver cloud services to Israeli government entities, including ministries, authorities, and government-owned companies. The project was scheduled to run for an initial period of seven years, and the Israeli government could extend it for up to 23 years.
A month later, Amazon said the Israeli government had selected AWS as its primary cloud provider, under the Nimbus contract for government ministries and its subsidiaries.
In 2024, an investigation by Israeli media outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call found that the country’s army stored information on servers managed by AWS. That data came from the surveillance of Palestinians, per the investigation. Sources quoted by the media outlets alleged such information could be used to help plan airstrikes.
Furthermore, the outlets reported an increase in Israeli service demands from Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure since October 2023, as army units sought data storage and AI services.
Why are protesters against Project Nimbus?
Project Nimbus has been facing backlash since it was first announced. In 2021, an anonymous letter signed internally by 90 Google workers and over 300 Amazon workers criticised the partnership, per The Guardian. They condemned Project Nimbus and the Israeli military’s killings of Palestinian civilians, claiming that their employers would be “selling dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government.”
The workers claimed that cloud service technology would help expand the surveillance of Palestinians, as well as illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
Opposition to Project Nimbus has grown since the Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, followed by Israel’s airstrikes and blockades in Gaza. In 2024, protesting Google employees even carried out sit-ins at Google locations in the U.S. Later, 28 employees were fired.
Pro-Palestinian protests by employees have also taken place at Big Tech company events, such as during Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2025.
Last year, The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call cited leaked documents revealing that under the Project Nimbus contract, Israel mandated that Google and Amazon would not restrict how its governmental units used the tech companies’ cloud services — even if Israel violated their terms of service.
However, Google has in the past stressed that Project Nimbus workloads are not related to the military, weapons, or classified intelligence. Amazon too highlighted its privacy commitments to its customers.
Which other tech companies have links to Israel?
A Palestinian-led movement, called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), has identified large technology companies that have formal contracts with Israel and its military sector.
The BDS website alleges these companies “technologically equip the Israeli military with computing systems as well as surveillance and communications technologies to accelerate the genocide in Gaza and automate apartheid in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
In September, Microsoft Vice Chair & President Brad Smith said the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD).”
This announcement came after media outlets The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was using Microsoft’s Azure to store Palestinians’ recorded phone calls data that could be leveraged for mass surveillance or even military action.
While Mr. Smith said that Microsoft does not provide technology to facilitate the mass surveillance of civilians, he affirmed the company’s “important work” to protect the cybersecurity of Israel and other West Asian countries.
In a conclusion to the external investigation that Microsoft commissioned after the Azure surveillance allegations, the tech giant said it would implement better review processes, provide more guidance to employees, and let employees anonymously report potential policy violations.
The No Azure for Apartheid group, which is made up of Microsoft workers, claimed on June 6 that Microsoft still allowed the Israeli military and government to host other surveillance projects on Azure.
“Nothing short of cutting all ties with the genocidal Israeli military and government will be enough. We will show up to escalate, confront, and disrupt in every place, at every moment, announced and unannounced,” said the group.
Published – June 18, 2026 02:51 pm IST
