Former Google Exec: Company Put Profits Over Human Rights
Former Google Exec: Company Put Profits Over Human Rights
A former Google policy executive accused the company of choosing
profits over human rights in a searing essay published Thursday.
Ross LaJeunesse, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine and
Google’s former head of international relations, blamed the leadership team
that has replaced founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar
Pichai, CFO Ruth Porat, and former Google Cloud leader Diane Greene—for failing
to live up to the company’s original model of “Don’t be evil.” He left the
company in April after 11 years.
“Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human
rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock
price,” he wrote in the essay, titled “I Was Google’s Head of International
Relations. Here’s Why I Left.” He left the company without signing a
nondisclosure agreement, according to The Washington Post.
In 2010, Google decided to stop censoring search results, which
infuriated the Chinese government and shut the company out of the world’s
largest internet market for the better part of the past decade. But soon after
the decision, LaJeunesse wrote, Google executives in charge of Google Maps and
Android ignored that precedent and began lobbying to launch their own products.
Google later began building a censored search engine, Dragonfly, in cooperation
with the Chinese government. When news of the project leaked, 1,400 employees
signed a petition criticizing Google’s leadership for their lack of
transparency, and Pichai has said in congressional testimony the company has stopped
working on the product.
LaJeunesse said executives, particularly in Google’s cloud
computing division, sought to shut him out of international policy decisions in
order to circumvent thorny human rights debates as it pursued deals with the
Saudi Arabian government. When LaJeunesse advocated for a binding company-wide
commitment to human rights, he said, executives waffled and produced thin
excuses to say no. His boss told him such a commitment might increase Google’s
legal liability.
“I then realized that the company had never intended to
incorporate human rights principles into its business and product decisions,”
he wrote.
Google issued a statement in response to LaJeunesse: "We
have an unwavering commitment to supporting human rights organizations and
efforts… Ross was offered a new position at the exact same level and
compensation, which he declined to accept. We wish Ross all the best with his
political ambitions."
LaJeunesse also described internal company strife. LaJeunesse
said his superiors routinely bullied their subordinates, particularly young
women. During a diversity training, Google’s human resources segregated various
minorities into rooms labelled with blunt descriptions like “homos” (LaJeunesse
is gay) and “brown people,” he wrote. When he raised the issue with HR, he
said, a senior executive dispatched someone to “do some digging” on LaJeunesse
and accidentally sent him the assigning email. LaJeunesse said Google later
told him there was no longer a job for him at the company, despite 90 open
positions on the policy team.
LaJeunesse closed the essay by advocating for stricter
regulations of tech companies.
“No longer can massive tech companies like Google be permitted
to operate relatively free from government oversight.”
Google has endured several years of employee unrest over a
strained relationship with the Trump administration, sexual harassment by
executives, and its work on Dragonfly and artificial intelligence for the
Department of Defense.
LaJeunesse and Google did not immediately respond to requests
for comment from The Daily Beast.
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