Google chief Sundar Pichai has told his employees to keep politics out of the workplace and said it was “too important a moment as a company” for them to be distracted.
Pichai's memo comes after the technology giant fired 28 employees for protests against the company and Amazon’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government amidst the country’s bombardment of Palestinians. While the organisation 'No Tech for Apartheid' claimed that over two dozen workers were “indiscriminately” fired, a Google statement confirmed that 28 involved employees had been fired.
Around nine people were arrested earlier by the police after hours of sit-ins at the two Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale. They livestreamed themselves being removed from the premises.
In his note titled 'Mission First', Pichai restated the company's "policies and expectations are clear."
"This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics," Pichai said in the memo. Pichai also said employees have a duty to ensure the company is an "objective and trusted" provider of information that serves "all of our users globally."
"When we come to work, our goal is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," Pichai said. "That supersedes everything else and I expect us to act with a focus that reflects that."
Google is combining the software division responsible for Android mobile software and the Chrome browser with the hardware division known for Pixel smartphones and Fitbit wearables. It's part of a broader plan to integrate artificial intelligence more widely throughout the company.
Pichai said the changes will turbocharge the Android and Chrome ecosystems while helping to spur innovation.
The decision will place both operations under the oversight of Rick Osterloh, a Google executive who previously oversaw the company's hardware group. Not long ago, Google insulated Android development from the hardware division, saying it wanted to avoid giving its phone designers an unfair advantage over the other major smartphone makers who used Android including Samsung and Motorola, as well as Chinese companies such as Oppo and Xiaomi.