and seemed irked by the fact that the same
question came up over and over again when
the executives had nothing new to say. The
meeting soon returned to business as usual
with a product demo for new Google Photo
features.
For Stapleton, the meeting was a huge let-
down. Her first job at Google, in 2007, had
been to help lead TGIF, including writing
talking points for Page and Brin. Now they
couldn’t even answer the main question. At
7:58 pm, Stapleton fired off another message
to the list suggesting the moms channel their
anger into collective action, like maybe a
walkout, a strike, or an open letter. “Googler
women (and allies) are REALLY ragefueled
right now, and I wonder how we can harness
that to force some, like, real change.”
As the women dissected the TGIF per-
formance, they also swapped stories about
reporting harassment to Google HR, only to
watch their abusers receive promotions. The
messages were still rolling in at 1 am.
The next morning, Stapleton started a
Google Group. “Welcome to ground zero of
the google women’s walkout/a day with-
out women (naming/branding tbd).” Just as
with the travel ban walkout 21 months ear-
lier, word spread quickly. A group of eight
organizers emerged, including Meredith
Whittaker, and they got to work planning
logistics, hammering out demands, and
fine-tuning their message. Stapleton set up
a Google form to ask employees why they
were walking out. The 350 responses that
promptly poured in included personal sto-
ries about harassment, discrimination, retal-
iation, and pay inequity.
From those responses and other inter-
nal posts, the organizers smelted together
five core demands. They wanted an end to
forced arbitration, a process that compelled
employees to bring their claims to a private
arbiter, paid for by Google, rather than before
a judge. They also demanded pay equity and
policies that would guarantee more trans-
parency around harassment claims. They
scrubbed personal details from the 350
stories and divided them into buckets that
mapped to each demand, so the rally orga-
nizers would have something to read.
As the plans came together, Google invited
Stapleton to join a meeting with three top
female executives: Ruth Porat, the compa-
ny’s chief financial officer; Wojcicki, the CEO
of YouTube; and Eileen Naughton, the head ofpany was set to report $9.19 billion in profits for the third quarter, thanks in part
to Trump’s tax cuts to benefit big business, but missed revenue targets. Now
executives scrambled to do damage control with employees before the earnings
call. A couple of hours after the Times story was published, Pichai sent a memo
assuring employees that Google had reformed its ways. In the past two years,
he wrote, 48 people had been terminated for sexual harassment, including 13
at the senior manager level or higher, none of whom received an exit package.
Employees were skeptical. If Google was so committed to a safe environment,
why was DeVaul still there? (A Google spokesperson said HR investigated the
allegation “thoroughly and took appropriate corrective action.”)
That same evening, Page—who was CEO when the claims about Rubin,
Singhal, and DeVaul came to light—apologized to employees at a TGIF. “I’ve had
to make a lot of decisions that affect people every day, some of them not easy.
And, you know, I think certainly there’s ones with the benefit of hindsight I would
have made differently,” he said in a prepared statement. Page’s explanation was
evasive, but his tone was serious. Brin, on the other hand, made an awkward joke
about confidentiality, which sounded to some as if he were blaming the leakers,