Google worried by backlash over Israeli gov’t contract

A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the company’s services to Israel were not used for military purposes.

By World Israel News Staff

Tech titan Google fretted that agreeing to provide cloud services to the Israeli government would damage its reputation, and those concerns have been exacerbated by recent employee protests over the contract, according to a new report from the New York Times.

In 2021, Google announced Project Nimbus, an ambitious initiative aimed at transitioning many Israel government ministries’ databases to the cloud.

The seven year deal is worth $1.26 billion, with a large portion of that money – $528 million – coming from Israel’s Defense Ministry.

While publicly Google has claimed that it has no qualms about partnering with Israel, documents recently obtained by the Times revealed that Google’s senior leadership were worried that the deal would create negative publicity for the technology giant.

According to a risk assessment document prepared by Google’s lawyers and external consultants before the deal was signed, advisors feared that the inclusion of Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israeli Security Agency could prove problematic.

“Google Cloud services could be used for, or linked to, the facilitation of human rights violations” read the document, which was viewed by the Times.

A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the company’s services to Israel were not used for military purposes.

“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our terms of service and acceptable use policy,” she said.

Anti-Israel activism by Google employees has been ongoing since the deal was signed in 2021.

In April 2024, Google fired 28 employees who staged raucous sit-ins at the company’s Sunnyvale and New York offices.

The demonstrators, who refused to leave CEO Thomas Kurian’s office, were participating in a “No Tech for Genocide Day of Action.”

“They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” the company’s vice president of global security, Chris Rackow, wrote in a company-wide memo.

“Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made co-workers feel threatened.”