Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is reportedly looking to close the Israel operations of its health data company, Verily Life Sciences. The company clarified that the decision was not related to the ongoing conflict between Gaza and Israel. Launched in 2021, Verily's Israel development facility employs 25 people in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Prof. Ehud Rivlin, who oversees Verily's operations in Israel, is a computer science professor at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and formerly worked at Google Health. Verily is closing its facilities in Israel in October. The company primarily focuses on computers for imaging and minimally invasive surgery.
The firm informed sources that Verily's decision to abandon the company's activities involving the Israel center had nothing to do with the closure, the economic climate in Israel, or the Gaza War.
Verily had laid off employees before this year. The corporation reportedly let go of 15% of its workforce in a general round of layoffs in January, and it shut down a molecular biology development facility in the US in March.
Google Lays Off Employees
Alphabet Inc. companies continue to undergo layoffs indirectly concerning Israel. Recently, after demonstrations over Google's alleged role in supplying technology to the Israeli government throughout the Gaza War, the corporation fired 28 workers.
Nine workers were detained during protests held at the Google offices in Sunnyvale, California, and New York, leading to their dismissal.
The protests concern "Project Nimbus," a $1.2 billion deal that Google and Amazon signed in 2021 requiring them to deliver cloud computing and artificial intelligence capabilities to Israel.
Despite Google's insistence that Nimbus is free of armaments and intelligence gatherings, the demonstrations, primarily spearheaded by No Tech For Apartheid, challenge Google's role in the project.
No Tech For Apartheid reacted by claiming that Google was distorting the events and that the sit-in was widely supported by non-participating staff and was nonviolent. The group objected to Google for prioritizing the rights of its employees over its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government.
Occasionally, Google workers have held rallies to demonstrate their discontent with the company's numerous initiatives and the moral issues surrounding its development of artificial intelligence.
One such example happened in 2018 when Google's dissatisfied workforce forced the company to end its contract with the US military for a program called "Project Maven," which involves helping the military analyze war video footage.
Alphabet's Success Despite Layoffs
Google has maintained its success despite internal misgivings about its business practices. Thanks to its well-known search engine, digital advertising accounts for most of the company's income.
Google's parent firm, Alphabet Inc., announced a $74 billion profit for the prior year. The corporation now employs over 182,000 people worldwide, up about 83,000 since it ended Project Maven in 2018. The company's workforce has also grown.
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