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

Microsoft said Friday it has “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy” but declined to provide details [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorised vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas.

The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organised at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.

Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government. But they contended that Thursday’s event was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee giving campaigns for people in need.

“We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. “But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honour the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves.”

Microsoft said Friday it has “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy” but declined to provide details.

Mohamed, who is from Egypt, said he now needs a new job in the next two months to transfer a work visa and avoid deportation.

Another fired worker, Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” because of the use of its technology by the Israeli military.

Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing.

The same group had months earlier called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stances on Israel.

Nasr, an Egyptian-raised 2021 graduate of Harvard University, is also a co-organiser of Harvard Alumni for Palestine.

Google earlier this year fired more than 50 workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war. The firings stemmed from internal turmoil and sit-in protests at Google offices centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

Microsoft said in its statement Friday about the firings that it remains “dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment. Due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, we cannot provide specific details.”

A counter-protester holding an Israeli flag walks into the parking lot near a protest at Google Cloud offices in Sunnyvale, California, U.S. on April 16, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Frandino
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Several Google employees in the U.S. were placed on leave and/or arrested after they carried out a sit-in protest at company offices in New York and California to demonstrate against Project Nimbus – a $1.2 billion deal with Amazon that supports the Israeli government’s technology infrastructure.

The organisation No Tech for Apartheid issued a statement on Thursday, claiming that over two dozen Google workers had been “indiscriminately” fired in an act of retaliation by the company.

During the sit-ins on Tuesday, protesting workers livestreamed footage of themselves being arrested in both cities, with the No Tech for Apartheid organisation calling them the ‘Nimbus Nine.’ The sit-ins lasted close to 10 hours, with workers holding up signs calling for Project Nimbus to be dropped.

“Google cited “bullying” and “harassment” as the reasons for workers’ firing. If there has been any bullying or harassment at the company, our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim colleagues have been the recipients,” said No Tech for Apartheid in its statement, adding that Google’s allegations of property damage were false.

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Tech workers worldwide are split in their reaction to the ongoing bombardment of Palestinians in the Gaza strip, with some openly supporting Israel’s military and volunteering their services to help locate people taken hostage by Hamas, while others are organising targeted boycotts against firms like HP and Siemens, or disrupting the companies supporting Israel’s military.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman said in January that Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian colleagues in tech were fearful of sharing their experiences, as they worried about retaliation or hurting their career. Acknowledging he was Jewish, Altman said that he received support in the face of growing antisemitism but that his Muslim peers did not receive similar backing.

Another OpenAI official deleted his posts on X and apologised in December after it was found he was calling for the Israeli military to increase its bombardment of Gaza.

No Tech for Apartheid promised that it would keep organising until Project Nimbus was dropped.

“Google has built custom tools for Israel’s Ministry of “Defense,” and has doubled down on contracting with the Israeli Occupation Forces, since the start of its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. By continuing its lies, Google is blatantly disrespecting and disregarding consumers, the media, as well as, most importantly, its workers,” said No Tech for Apartheid, calling chief Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian “genocide profiteers”.

Oxfam International said in January this year that Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day.