I am seeing a lot of comments on here but the context not being mentioned is that they were protesting while clocked in or working on the clock.
Google is technically in authority to do that. The article is worded a bit out of context to make the act of protesting an a big company we all find to be evil more evil for letting employees go that were wasting company time.
I get it before you even type it I understand Google isn't short on money and the time portion won't effect them but has the employees protested while clocked out this would have been a less likely outcome and I also get it, "yeah they would have fired them anyway." Sure believe what you want but it doesn't take away that Google had the authority to fire while the employees were in their time no matter what they were protesting. If I did this at my job and was getting paid they would fire me as well.
EDIT: Lemmy is Reddit but it's full of users in denial.