Protesters stormed Microsoft\u2019s Redmond headquarters on Monday and made it into president Brad Smith\u2019s office in Building 34, forcing a temporary lockdown. The \u201cNo Azure for Apartheid\u201d group livestreamed their sit-in on Twitch, hoisting banners, chanting \u2018Brad Smith, you can\u2019t hide, you\u2019re supporting genocide!\u2019 and posting a mock legal summons charging Smith with \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Microsoft did not respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment earlier in the day, but a few hours after the occupation, Smith held a hastily called press conference beside his desk to address the extraordinary events. Of the seven people involved, he said, just two were current Microsoft employees and one was a former Google employee, Smith said.<\/p>\n
He also told reporters gathered on the scene \u2014 including from GeekWire<\/a> \u2014 that after the protesters refused to leave when asked, Redmond police had to physically remove them from the building. Police arrested all seven on charges including trespassing and obstruction.<\/p>\n Smith said the protesters\u2019 actions were \u201cnot necessary in order to get us to pay attention\u201d and that such activity \u201cdistracts from the real dialogue\u201d that Microsoft is having with employee groups of different backgrounds, faiths, and cultures inside Microsoft.<\/p>\n According to a report earlier in the day by The Verge<\/a>, the protest included both active Microsoft workers and former employees who\u2019d been fired for previous activism. Monday\u2019s escalation follows months of protests over Microsoft\u2019s cloud contracts with Israel, including recent arrests at company headquarters.<\/p>\n A recent Guardian investigation <\/a>revealed Israel uses Microsoft\u2019s services to store data from millions of calls each day made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s corporate takeover mirrored tactics from Google employees more than a year ago. In April 2024, nine Google workers staged coordinated protests across New York and California offices, with five occupying Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian\u2019s office for nine hours. They wrote demands on his whiteboard and wore \u201cGoogler against genocide\u201d shirts.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco The Google protesters targeted Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Amazon that provides Israel\u2019s government and military with cloud computing and AI tools. The employees\u2019 sit-ins and arrests were similarly livestreamed on Twitch; three days later, 28 employees involved in those protests were fired<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update: This story was updated to reflect Smith\u2019s comments, which were made hours after the protesters in his office were removed but after this piece was first published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters stormed Microsoft\u2019s Redmond headquarters on Monday and made it into president Brad Smith\u2019s office in Building 34,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,252,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-179469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-microsoft","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115100249231698465","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n