for the late notice, but we are going to cancel today’s Town Hall,” he wrote. “We
had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to bring us
together and move forward.” But the questions employees had submitted for dis-
cussion at the meeting, he wrote, had been leaked to the press and were already
appearing in outlets like wired. He also alluded, vaguely, to the employees who
had been doxed as part of his rationale for canceling the meeting. “On some
websites Googlers are now being named personally,” Pichai wrote.
Fong-Jones was at home in Brooklyn when she received Pichai’s email. She
had wanted the executives to explain why, given their reasons for firing Damore,
they had let his memo float around Google for more than a month. Now it felt as
if Google was using the abuse she and other employees had experienced as an
excuse to not answer questions. “That 100 percent did not sit right with me,” she
says. “That wasn’t going to make me any safer. In fact, it was a triumph, almost,
for the people harassing me.”
In her internal advocacy work, Fong-Jones had always been happy to meet
senior managers on their terms. She kept their secrets. She followed the rules. And
she instructed others to do the same. Executives talked to people they trusted, and
they didn’t trust people who talked to outsiders. But now Fong-Jones decided to
take matters into her own hands. In October she invited a labor group that nor-
mally organizes blue-collar workers to teach Googlers more about protected con-
certed activity. Perhaps a knowledge of labor law would come in handy.
III.
IN THE BEGINNING, GOOGLE GAVE ITS EMPLOYEES FREEDOM BECAUSE
doing so paid off. Some of the company’s first multibillion-dollar wins came
from granting engineers autonomy and stoking their ambitions. In 2002 five
engineers coding through the weekend came up with the core insight behind
AdWords, the source of much of the company’s revenue. The engineers weren’t
on the ads team and hadn’t been asked to work on the problem. But they saw a
note Larry Page had left in the office kitchen
on a Friday afternoon saying “THESE ADS
SUCK.” By 5 am Monday the engineers had
sent out a link with a prototype of their pro-
posed solution.
That breakthrough set the stage for
what seemed like a virtuous cycle. Because
Google made its money by showing people
ads, it had a vested interest in growing the
internet itself, and in finding new ways to
make it useful. Free, world-changing prod-
ucts poured out: Search, Gmail, Chrome,
Maps, Docs, Photos, Translate. To the lucky
beneficiaries—the company’s billions of
users—it was almost as if Google were a
public works department and not a capi-
talist enterprise at all. The best engineers
on earth flocked to enlist, and the company
offered them time to spend on their own
larks. Google saw office perks, employee
freedom, and lofty missions as a proven rec-
ipe for staying ahead in a changing world.
Over time, Google’s leaders codified this
radical culture and evangelized it to the
outside world, as if Google had found a way
to suspend the ordinary laws of manage-
ment and commerce. In their best-selling
2014 book, How Google Works, Schmidt
and Jonathan Rosenberg, two of the main
architects of Google’s culture, stressed the2018
JANUARY 8
Damore files a
class-action lawsuit
against Google.
FEBRUARY 28
Meredith Whittaker,
a project manager at
Google Cloud, creates
an internal petition
against Project Maven
after Google wins the
contract in secret.
MARCH 6
Gizmodo breaks the
story about Maven.JUNE 1
Google decides not
to renew the Maven
contract.
JUNE 7
Pichai releases a set of
AI principles, vowing
that the company won’t
build technology “whose
purpose contravenes
widely accepted princi-
ples of international law
and human rights.”
AUGUST 1
The Intercept exposes
plans for Project Drag-
onfly, Google’s “explor-
atory” censored search
engine in China.AUGUST 11
Secretary of defense
James Mattis visits the
Googleplex to discuss
bolstering the compa-
ny’s ties with the Penta-
gon—just as Google is
bidding for an artificial
intelligence contract
called Project Maven.OCTOBER 25
The New York Times
publishes an inves-
tigation of Google’s
“permissive culture,”
including the protection
of three male execu-
tives accused of sexual
misconduct.
NOVEMBER 1
More than 20,000
employees at Google
offices around the
world walk off the job
to call attention
to sexual harassment,
discrimination, and
pay inequity at the
company.2019
MARCH 26
Google forms an AI
ethics advisory council
that includes Heritage
Foundation president
Kay Coles James—
which the company dis-
bands nine days later.
APRIL 26
At a Google town hall,
women discuss the
alleged retaliation they
faced after participat-
ing in the November
walkout.2017
JANUARY 30
Googlers protest Pres-
ident Trump’s executive
order banning citizens
from seven majority
Muslim countries.
AUGUST 2
A memo questioning
Google’s pro-diversity
hiring practices goes
viral inside the com-
pany and leaks to
the press. Days later,
Google fires the
memo’s author, engi-
neer James Damore.