This archive report was first published on 23 June 2020.
Published on June 23, 2020, a group of over 1,600 Google employees have signed a petition to stop the company from selling email and other services to police departments.
The petition, seen by Reuters, expresses disappointment with Google not joining the efforts to defund and defang police departments, which have been a long-standing call from civil rights activists across the United States.
“We should not be in the business of profiting from racist policing,” the Google petition said, citing the company's sales of the G Suite package to the Clarkstown police department in New York.
However, a Google spokesperson responded, “We have longstanding terms of use for generally available computing platforms like Gmail, G Suite and Google Cloud Platform, and these products will remain available for governments and local authorities, including police departments, to use.”
Clarkstown police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google has faced internal criticism in the past over sales and partnerships involving the US military and foreign governments seen as authoritarian.
