Ex-Google executive: Company only pays lip-service to human rights principles as workplace culture descended into bullying

Former head of international relations at Google speaks out over the company's compromises on China and Saudi Arabia, and its use of diversity programmes to bully staff

The last decade has seen Google embrace authoritarian regimes, such as China's and Saudi Arabia's, as the company chased ever-higher revenues as co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin disengaged from the company.

That's according to Google's ousted former head of international relations, Ross Lajeunesse, now a Democratic Party candidate for the US Senate in Maine. Lajeunesse, who had previously worked for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, also revealed how Google used diversity programmes to bully staff as its corporate culture shifted.

Senior colleagues bullied and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks

The company had shut down its China operations in 2010 at the behest of Page and Brin when the demands of China's government became too onerous. But as they took a back seat, executives became ever-keener to strike a deal with China's government to return.

During his time at Google, Lajeunesse said that the company's staff numbers grew from around 10,000 to more than 100,000 - each new hire progressively undermining the company's original ‘Don't be evil' ethos, he suggested.

"My team and I continued to engage with product executives who were increasingly frustrated by the phenomenal growth in the Chinese market and pushed hard for our re-entry into China.

Dragonfly was only one of several developments that concerned those of us who still believed in the mantra of ‘Don't be evil'

"I was alarmed when I learned in 2017 that the company had begun moving forward with the development of a new version of a censored Search product for China, codenamed ‘Dragonfly'. But Dragonfly was only one of several developments that concerned those of us who still believed in the mantra of ‘Don't be evil'.

On the Google Cloud side, executives were also keenly pushing deals with Saudi Arabia's government, and "wanted to hire their own policy team" in order to circumvent Lajeunesse's office.

When Google established the Google Center for Artificial Intelligence in Beijing it made clear how far his influence had regressed, with Google management also rejecting Lajeunesse's alternative proposal of a company-wide Human Rights Program.

Executives were also keenly pushing cloud deals with Saudi Arabia's government

The corporate culture has also been debased over the past decade, Lajeunesse warned, with the company's all-hands meetings and diversity exercises descending into bullying.

"Senior colleagues bullied and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks. At an all-hands meeting, my boss said, ‘Now you Asians come to the microphone too. I know you don't like to ask questions'.

"At a different all-hands meeting, the entire policy team was separated into various rooms and told to participate in a ‘diversity exercise' that placed me in a group labeled ‘homos' while participants shouted out stereotypes such as ‘effeminate' and ‘promiscuous'."

Other staff were separated by ethnicity, he added.

"In each of these cases, I brought these issues to HR and senior executives and was assured the problems would be handled. Yet in each case, there was no follow up to address the concerns — until the day I was accidentally copied on an email from a senior HR director.

"In the email, the HR director told a colleague that I seemed to raise concerns like these a lot, and instructed her to ‘do some digging' on me instead.

Lajeunesse was made redundant shortly after.

He blames a number of factors for the change, starting with the incoming management following Brin and Page's departure with beating quarterly revenue and profits targets "the key priority".

In addition, the rapid expansion of products means that the company is no longer solely concerned with serving adverts to users of its search engine, but keen to tie-up cloud contracts, pushing into artificial intelligence and using products like the Android operating system to track users geographically.

"No longer can massive tech companies like Google be permitted to operate relatively free from government oversight," concludes Lajeunesse.

It's not the first time that the company's aggressive diversity policies have been cited, with former engineer James Damore sueing Google over his dismissal in 2017 following a critical memo.

In 2016, it was hit with a law suit that claimed that the company had set-up a system for staff to 'inform' on each other