In a vigil for a Palestinian colleague killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, the Google staff in London have censured the company’s provision of technology to the regime.
The Wednesday event was to honor software engineer Mai Ubeid. Ubeid was a graduate of the Google-funded coding boot camp, Gaza Sky Geeks, and was in 2020 part of the Google for Startups accelerator program.
Ubeid and her entire family were killed in Gaza on October 31.
The No Tech For Apartheid campaign also participated in the vigil outside the Google offices near King’s Cross station.
Google has been under for business partnership with certain Israeli firms.
Particular criticism has been leveled at Project Nimbus, an agreement for Google and Amazon to supply Israel and its military with cloud and computing services including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Project Nimbus is a $1.2-billion cloud computing project.
Although Google has refuted the claims of providing technology for military purposes, the finance ministry of the regime has announced Amazon and Google would be also providing services to the “defense establishment.”
Many Google workers have spent the past two years protesting against what they call providing tools that aid the “apartheid” Israel has imposed on the Palestinians.
“I 100 percent don’t think it’s ok for the products we are building being used for this and I think we are trying to voice our perspective inside [Google] and sometimes we feel like we’re not heard,” said Alma, a trust and safety specialist, according to the Middle East Eye.
“We don’t agree with Google products being used to kill civilians or non-civilians, anyone, any human – we’re not ok with artificial intelligence being used in war to make life and death decisions.”
