Gaza protesters block entrance to Google conference over Israel contracts

Thousands of attendees waiting to enter Google I/O were redirected to another entrance, and the event started on time. Groups including the No Tech for Genocide coalition and other groups from across the Bay Area held a sign reading "Google stop fueling genocide". They chanted "we won't stop til Nimbus gets dropped," referencing a 1.2bn project supported by Amazon and Google that provides provides artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli government. Speaking before the crowd, a protester said people have gathered in Mountain View to attend Google's highly anticipated annual conference, but that protesters were there to share "the real story". Google is slated to announce major updates to its products at the conference today, most of them focused on AI. "What you will not be hearing from today's speakers is that right now, as I stand here before you, the state of Israel is using Google technology to execute history's first AI-powered genocide," they said. A number of attendees were current and former employees of the company, including Ariel Koren, a former Google worker who says she was pushed out of the company in 2022 for speaking out against Project Nimbus.