On Monday, thousand of Google employees staged protests over President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, revealing rising tension between the technology industry and new administration.

More than two thousand employees of Google parent Alphabet Inc. participated across several offices. At Google's Mountain View, California, headquarters, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and co-Founder Sergey Brin - both immigrants - spoke to the crowd, voicing concerns over Trump's order that limits travel to the US from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Many tech companies criticized the order, which was signed late Friday. Pichai sent a note to Google staff that day, saying 187 employees were potentially affected. Google asked those employees overseas to return immediately, pledging to help with the logistics and handle the costs.

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Pichai told the assembled employees on Monday that the issue is "at the core of the founding of this company," according to a Google employee there. "We spent two hours this morning talking about all of this. There is large work that remains to be done." Brin talked about his refugee past. Part of a Russian Jewish family, he emigrated to the US because of anti-Semitism in that country.

Several people at Google had raised concerns about the company's response to Trump's policy at a company-wide meeting on Thursday, a day before the order was signed, according to people familiar with the matter. At the time, some employees underestimated the severity of the order, thinking it would only impact new visa applications, one of these people said.

The disruption comes at a delicate time for Google. The company, which had close ties to the Obama Administration, is determining its broader policy approach to Trump on a myriad of issues, including net neutrality, taxes, and competition law.