Unrest and discontent had become fairly common within Google's management starting last year.
We could remember the time when Google employees protested against the company's deals with the military. It subsequently led to the cancellation of Project Maven, a drone program collaboration between Google and the Pentagon. Allegedly, the project would have used the company's AI technology as a weapon for the US military, something that the Google employees didn't feel good about.
Months later, Google came under fire again for yet another project. This time, Google was allegedly working on a search engine for China. The search engine will be under the care of the Chinese government, and they would be able to censor its results. Then, The New York Times reported that over a thousand employees protested this secret project—although the actual existence of such a project still remains unknown.
Of all these, the biggest show of discontent would have been the massive walkout last December, which saw more than 20,000 Google employees and contract workers from all around the world participate. This time, the employees were protesting against the company's alleged mishandling of cases of sexual assault and misconduct.
Although the walk-out was a massive success, its forerunners say that they started getting targeted unfairly by Google months later. In under twenty-four hours, Google employees staged a sit-in to protest this alleged retaliation of Google for the walkouts.
Hard to trust
These cases have shown how Google employees have grown distrustful of their management over the years, the fact that Google CEO Sundar Pichai has privately acknowledged. In a leaked video, Pichai said that maintaining the trust of Google's employees has "definitely gotten harder to do this at the scale we are doing it."
Pichai's comments were made during one of the company's weekly all-hands meeting for employees, called TGIF.
However, Pichai's comments are representative of an internal conflict within Google itself. Back in August, a memo written by a former employee has caused a divide between conservatives and liberals in the company. The memo itself was a conservative piece, which talked about how Google's predominantly male workforce can be explained by biological differences between men and women.
Spyware
Meanwhile, employees may have legitimate reasons to distrust their management, beyond the deals Google makes with the military and the handling of its sensitive cases within the workforce. Just recently, employees found out that Google installed an internal tool which they fear could be used to spy on them.
The tool reportedly tags employees automatically when they create calendar invites with more than 10 rooms and 100 participants.
Google rebuts with a statement through a representative for Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. The statement reads, "These claims about the operation and purpose of this extension are categorically false. This is a pop-up reminder that asks people to be mindful before auto-adding a meeting to the calendars of large numbers of employees."
Google further explains that the tool was created in response to an increase in spam around calendars and events. Google also says that the tool doesn't collect any personal data, nor does it inhibit the employee from using the calendar. It's merely a speed bump when an employee tries to reach out to a large group of people, Google said.
