Tech giant firing staff for political protest is among the biggest lobbyists of government and not averse to very ‘political’ business
Google has 'a culture of vibrant, open discussion', CEO Sundar Pichai says, but is not a place to 'fight over disruptive issues or debate politics'. Photograph: Adam Berry/Getty ImagesFirst, there are the irritating workplace politics for which you fire your employees. In April, Google chose to terminate the employment of more than 50 workers who criticised the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
Israel remains one of the world’s leading creators of companies that supply advanced surveillance technologies, including the widely condemned and misused Pegasus software that infects smartphones and which has been documented in use against world leaders, European parliamentarians, journalists and human rights activists.
Amazon provides services to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, facilitating surveillance and deportations, and also provides video from its Ring doorbell cameras to police services. Google likewise has been connected to controversial contracts, providing technology for drone strikes, and working with the Pentagon.
The companies will argue that this isn’t politics, much less Politics. It’s just business as usual. But if this isn’t politics/Politics, then why are these companies among the biggest bankrollers of lobbyists targeting every level of government in the US and the EU? Lobbyists, in case the companies have forgotten, meet politicians and the various arms of local, national and EU-level government. Politicians and governments do politics.
Way down at the bottom, in a section entitled “Mission first” , Pichai notes that Google has “a culture of vibrant, open discussion” and says, “ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics”.
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