Google sacks 28 employees involved in protests over Israel govt contract
Tech giant Google has laid off 28 employees who were involved in sit-in protests at its offices over a Google contract with the Israeli government.
Reliance Industries’ digital unit has received a subscription amount of Rs 33,737 crore from Google for a 7.73 per cent stake in Jio Platforms, the Indian conglomerate said in a filing.
“Jio Platforms Limited, a subsidiary of the Company, today received the subscription amount of Rs 33,737 crore from Google International LLC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google LLC),” the company said in a BSE filing on Monday.
RIL further said that the “Jio Platforms Limited has allotted equity shares to Google International LLC following which Google International LLC holds 7.73 per cent of the fully diluted equity share capital of Jio Platforms Limited.”
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The transaction marks the US technology giant’s biggest-ever investment in an Indian company.
Google and Jio Platforms will also collaborate to develop “an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimisations to the Android operating system and the Play Store”, the two companies had said in July.
Jio Platforms houses India’s youngest but largest telecom service provider Jio with more than 400 million users. It also houses the digital assets of RIL, including broadband connectivity, cloud and edge computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence.
The Google-Jio deal will seek to leverage Jio and Google’s existing digital services to capture the emerging digitisation market beyond the current 500 million internet users in India.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) had given its nod to the deal around two weeks ago. The agreement also paved the way for Google to jointly develop smartphones in India.
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