The digital defiance unfolded at the swanky office of Google Cloud's big boss, Thomas Kurian, in Sunnyvale and spilt over to the 10th-floor hangout in Google's biggest cheese’s office.

The drama, streamed live for the world to see, saw the rebels camped out in Kurian's lair for a marathon nine hours, scribbling their demands and donning tees blasting "Googler against genocide."

Meanwhile, the protesters claimed a three-story common space in New York as their stage. Five staff from Sunnyvale and four from New York were cuffed by coppers.

Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer, flew in to join the Sunnyvale showdown and ended up in the clink. "On a personal level, I'm not about Google getting into bed with any army, no matter who's signing the cheques,"

“Google is an international company, and no matter which military it's with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end, represented by Google's employee base and our user base."

But Google's mouthpiece told CNBC: "Google Cloud supports numerous governments worldwide in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services. This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."