Alphabet Employee Petition Calls For Google To Stop Selling Services To The Police

Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG employees are petitioning the Google parent company to stop providing email and other services to police.

What Happened: On Monday, the employees expressed disillusionment that Google has not joined forces with "millions who want to defang and defund” police departments in a petition that was seen by Reuters and reportedly signed by more than 1,600 people. 

Highlighting the sale of G Suite — a package that contains email, document editing and other tools, —to the police department in Clarkstown, New York, the petitioners said the company "should not be in the business of profiting from racist policing.” 

A Google spokesperson said that products like G Suite, Google Cloud and others will “remain available for governments and local authorities, including police departments, to use,” according to Reuters. 

Why It Matters: Google has faced criticism over past sales and partnerships involving United States military and foreign governments deemed authoritarian by activists, the newswire said. 

While Google has halted the sale of facial recognition technology, the company remains firm on helping governments with cybersecurity and other matters.

The protests emanating from the death of George Floyd have lead to other companies such as International Business Machines Corporation IBM abandoning the sale of general-purpose facial recognition software.

Microsoft Corporation MSFT will stop selling facial recognition software to police departments in the United States, while Amazon Inc AMZN will stop sales for a year.

GOOGL Price Action: Class A Alphabet shares ended Monday's higher by 1.83% at $1,450.66.