Not OK, Google
October 25, 2018 11:30 AM   Subscribe

How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the ‘Father of Android’ The internet giant paid Mr. Rubin $90 million and praised him, while keeping silent about a misconduct claim. The article goes into a number of other accusations of sexual misconduct against high-profile Google execs, and how the company ignored them or covered them up, often while rewarding the men involved.
posted by olinerd (64 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Don't be evil"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 12:12 PM on October 25, 2018 [26 favorites]


why is everything shit
posted by JamesBay at 12:19 PM on October 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”

These people are fucking scum.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:22 PM on October 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


Reading the full article, it seems like Google is a toxic place to work, in this case, for subordinate women.
posted by JamesBay at 12:24 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


You raped one of our employees - here's $90 million!!!
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:25 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


why is everything shit

Capitalism, basically. He made money, and companies are there to make money. The other things they do are ancillary to that. He made a lot of money for them, so they're going to put up with a lot of the ancillary.

It's baked into the DNA of how corporations work that these things will continue to happen as long as profits are the ultimate goal.
posted by turntraitor at 12:29 PM on October 25, 2018 [31 favorites]




“any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual and did not involve any person who reported directly to him.”

Any. The implication being there were quite possibly many.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:33 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


When asked about Mr. Rubin and the other cases, Eileen Naughton, Google’s vice president for people operations, said in a statement that the company takes harassment seriously and reviews every complaint.

Just once I'd like to see the person giving these kind of statements actually be a man. So at least one of them would have to wince in knowing that he's lying on behalf of his board.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:40 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


They considered it "consensual" because in this brave new nazi world being rich or being someone's boss means they own you, you're a thing.

Your consent is as nonsensical to them as a car consenting to being driven.
posted by maxwelton at 12:44 PM on October 25, 2018 [18 favorites]


did not involve any person who reported directly to him
posted by tclark at 12:45 PM on October 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


OK, so this sucks, and everybody involved is going to hell. All agree? Check.

What I'm wondering is, other than these stories that keep coming up for high profile corporations, is there some kind of data? Like, is anybody trying to come up with a measure of how badly organizations deal with this kind of thing? Is there a list? One that would maybe have Planned Parenthood close to the top, and Fox News close to the bottom? Because then I could go and, like, not buy stock in the bottom half, or something.

Otherwise I'm just kind of confused, because this doesn't tell me if things are better at Facebook. Or Whole Foods. Or whatever. It just tells me that it happens at Google, which is shit, and presumably it happens everywhere, and the primary motive of all involved, other than the victims, is to keep it quiet and stay out of the news.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 1:06 PM on October 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


I hope the people victimized by this misconduct are safe and successful, and that the inevitable backlash to this article doesn't impact the emotional or financial well-being of any of Google's identified critics.

I could not do what Liz Fong-Jones gets up and does every day for like, an entire hour.
posted by bagel at 1:08 PM on October 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


its just sexual predators all the way down, isn't it?
posted by supermedusa at 1:08 PM on October 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


Pretty much, yeah.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:09 PM on October 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


It's the "sexual harassment to golden parachute" pipeline for abusive dudes.

Must be nice to fail upward and get the budget of a hollywood movie when you do so.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:17 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


This sort of... attitude... is pretty-much hard-baked into Silicon Valley culture. Marc Andreessen, a founder and principal at a16z, routinely shares all sorts of racist, misogynistic, pseudo-scientific garbage (once upon a time he used to Tweet about tech commercialization). But now it's all moronic, misogynistic shit from Quillette.
posted by JamesBay at 1:18 PM on October 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


its just sexual predators all the way down, isn't it?

Patriarchy summed up in 10 words.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:27 PM on October 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


The big part of this article for me isn't all the salacious dirt on Andy Rubin (hoo boy!) but also calling out David Drummond and Rich DeVaul and Amit Singhal. (Not mentioned: Rod Chavez and Vic Gundotra, subject of a current lawsuit.)

But the really big part of this article is putting it in the context of the leadership example set by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt. Or rather, the awful example all three set with their own conduct that while short of actionable sexual harassment clearly was not the example of correctness you'd like your executive team to demonstrate.
posted by Nelson at 1:32 PM on October 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


its just sexual predators all the way down, isn't it?

focusing on only sexual misbehaviour gives all the other misdeeds a free pass. I mean great they're getting called out on the misogyny, but what about all the other stuff that gets swept under the carpet?
posted by cfraenkel at 1:41 PM on October 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


I think this really goes to show that no matter what they say or how hard they try, there will never be such a thing as a woke/feminist big tech company. There will never be such a thing as a woke/feminist billionaire. It is like the liberal/centrist version of the conservative "good guy with a gun" fantasy.

If they treat billions of people as simply buckets of data and faucets of ad-revenue (and happily collaborate with the US military, ICE, the Saudis, and other massively fucked up organizations in harming black and brown people), it should be no surprise they will also treat marginalized people in their own organizations like shit.

As long as capitalism and all the systemic issues like misogyny and white supremacy underpin these institutions and people, expect nothing other than degradation and horror.
posted by Ouverture at 1:48 PM on October 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


The big part of this article for me isn't all the salacious dirt on Andy Rubin (hoo boy!) but also calling out David Drummond and Rich DeVaul and Amit Singhal.

It's jaw-dropping. Also "Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive, once retained a mistress to work as a company consultant, according to four people with knowledge of the relationship."

It's worth emphasizing how big these names are. I've never worked at Google, but these are all people really widely known in the industry. Google used to fly Singhal around for recruiting events and talks and was rather the public face of Search. Rubin was a legend even well before Android. Drummond is general counsel. These aren't just execs, but some of the most prominent people in the company.

And this is the culture they set.
posted by zachlipton at 1:56 PM on October 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


It took action only when security staff found bondage sex videos on Mr. Rubin’s work computer, said three former and current Google executives briefed on the incident.

Yo, how you gonna be a tech millionaire and not know to not put your pr0n on your work computer
posted by General Malaise at 1:57 PM on October 25, 2018 [28 favorites]


And this is the culture they set.

This really isn't surprising, because it's all endemic to tech culture as a whole. These guys didn't appear in a vacuum.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:59 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't even know how I knew, but I was well aware that all three Google execs (Brin, Page, and Schmidt) were skeezy. And I know one of the women identified in the article as well (the title for this post is actually her pun) and she'd been quitely, privately warning people for quite some time about Google's upper management and their treatment of women. The whisper network continues to be alive and well for women in tech but I'm so glad people are coming out publicly about this stuff so it can come out in the open and no one gets victimized just because they weren't tapped in to the whisper networks.
posted by olinerd at 1:59 PM on October 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Years ago there was a borderline unlistenable episode of BBC radio program In Our Time about the industrial revolution, where the host, Melvin Bragg, kept trying to insist on the special genius of the various English inventors of the era, while the academic experts present tried to make the point over and over again that it was mostly just a matter of easy access to coal and the technology to convert it into power, which meant that they had access to more energy than any humans had ever had before. This afforded Englishmen an opportunity to experiment in ways that had never been possible before. But Bragg kept insisting on some special genius.

I thought of that episode when I read the New Yorker article about the engineer guy who was brought in to the nascent self-driving car program at Google. Basically, he made tons of mistakes and possibly endangered lives, but Larry Page intervened repeatedly to protect him and give him money, seemingly because this engineer fit Page’s ideas about what a tech visionary should act like, and therefore that normal rules shouldn’t apply.

In modern culture we grow up with the myth of the genius, and that myth is of difficult people who no one understands but then turn out to be right. The message pop culture sends us about this type, whether it’s Dr. House or Willy Wonka, is that if we just trust them even if we don’t understand them, tolerate their behavior which deviates from norms, and protect them from those who try to stop them, everything will turn out for the best.

Silicon Valley believes that myth, and the consequences of a community buying into it are that people who fit the idea of what a genius is are trusted with responsibility over other people, their awful behavior towards others is tolerated, and they are protected from any harm to them which would otherwise result from their horrendous actions.

I’m not surprised at all that someone labeled “the father of android” would get that treatment. They probably believed he was a special genius.

But the truth is that there are countless people out there who could do just as well, maybe even better, if given the opportunity afforded by commanding some of the money flowing from the ad revenue spigot that Google profits from.

There’s no sane reason they have to be people who treat others like shit.
posted by Kattullus at 1:59 PM on October 25, 2018 [105 favorites]


There’s no sane reason they have to be people who treat others like shit.

The invisible hand of the market, in its infinite wisdom, selects for lucky psychopaths.
posted by Pyry at 2:06 PM on October 25, 2018 [17 favorites]


General Malaise: "It took action only when security staff found bondage sex videos on Mr. Rubin’s work computer, said three former and current Google executives briefed on the incident.

Yo, how you gonna be a tech millionaire and not know to not put your pr0n on your work computer
"

He obviously thought that rules didn't apply to him and there's 90 million dollars that says that he was right in thinking that. A lowly engineer would be fired with no severance for doing any of the things these guys did but when you're a rock star, you can do anything with no repercussions.
posted by octothorpe at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2018 [19 favorites]




As is the practice at Google, "Don't be evil" was deprecated in 2012, but the new one is still in early development.

What is that phrase about rot starting at the head? If the founders think this is OK, what can one expect from the executives?

I was there in 2014 during the whole Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg "liaison".

Married 40 year old billionaire cofounder, with small children, starts an affair with a 20 something year old employee who at the time was already dating Hugo Barra, a powerful Android executive. (I just half remembered, did Larry Page not also date Marissa Mayer while both were at Google?).

Many people internally were furious about leadership ignoring the whole thing, not answering questions about the ethics of the whole thing.

The Hugo Barra left Google in a hurry to go to Xiaomi. The departure had been planned for a year, but it was rushed and caused a unnecessary pain for the rest of the Android people.

Leadership never, as far as i know, acknowledged any questions about the ethics of the whole affair or the effect that it had on the other 20,000 employees.
posted by Dr. Curare at 2:42 PM on October 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


I guess it's time to take another step in the complex process of de-Googling, not that it's likely to help that much. I probably could go to lineage, and the remaining pain points are Maps, Play, YouTube, and everyone else who uses Docs.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 3:43 PM on October 25, 2018


In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so.

Why would you pay people you do not have to pay? Why would you pay MILLIONS of dollars to people who violated your rules? WHY? Because you feel bad for them, maybe? It boggles the mind. Surely if an employee is terminated for cause their non-compete still applies? It's all so maddening. I just take comfort in imagining all these guys getting fired for sexual harassment, and all the people who let them get away with it, one day arriving in The Bad Place where Shawn will introduce them to the Penis Flattener and Butthole Spiders.
posted by pjsky at 4:13 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Why would you pay people you do not have to pay?

Apparently, at least for Rubin, this payout was accompanied by an agreement that he wouldn't work for any of Google's competitors, or disparage the company.
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 4:15 PM on October 25, 2018


Also, I don't buy the notion floating around that they needed to pay him in order to avoid challenges over Android.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:18 PM on October 25, 2018


href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Metafilter
WebFont.load({ google: { families: ['Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic', 'Montserrat:400'] } });

Looking forward to these bits to be gone from Metafilter. Hit the evil where it hurts.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:38 PM on October 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


(I just half remembered, did Larry Page not also date Marissa Mayer while both were at Google?)

Yes, yes he did. At least they were both single at the time.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:01 PM on October 25, 2018


Christ, what an asshole.
posted by hijinx at 5:31 PM on October 25, 2018


every day, reading the news increases my resolve to stay the fuck out of the tech industry.

every day.
posted by scose at 5:32 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


> As is the practice at Google, "Don't be evil" was deprecated in 2012 -- Dr. Curare

What's... "funny"... about this is I can't think of many other tech companies (other than biotech ones) that were so clearly, obviously, definitely evil from their very inception. God, the industry joke when GMail launched was that it stood for Government Mail, since it was designed from the ground up to be easy to monitor, mine and mirror.

Google's invention and unchecked expansion of the customers-are-the-product business model, copied to such great success ever since, is one of the underpinnings of what has gone wrong in the modern world.

> why is everything shit -- JamesBay

Yeah, exactly.
posted by rokusan at 5:55 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Surely if an employee is terminated for cause their non-compete still applies?

Since these are California employees the non-competes do not apply in any circumstance. Quitting, firing, layoffs, etc, it just doesn't matter.
posted by jmauro at 6:11 PM on October 25, 2018


In California, a non-compete can apply if you're paid by the company the amount they would have paid you for the duration of the "gag" they want to apply. If, when you leave, you get a non-compete for 2 years along with 2 years' pay, I believe it's still enforceable in CA.
posted by tclark at 7:15 PM on October 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


This really isn't surprising, because it's all endemic to tech culture as a whole.

It’s endemic to culture as a whole.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:23 PM on October 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


As far as Google goes, I think it's important to remember that the company has undergone two massive shifts since this happened. The first was the hiring of Ruth Porat as CFO in 2015, and the second was the reorganization into Alphabet shortly afterwards. With that reorganization, Larry Page basically disappeared and Sundar Pichai took over.

Comparing 2014 Google to 2018 Google is a bit unfair because the leadership has completely turned over. This is holds true for areas where Google acted like a jackass in the past but is probably doing better today (see Sundar Pichai's email) and the areas where Google was more principled in the past and has deviated today (China).
posted by fremen at 8:48 PM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


What’s… “funny”… about this is I can’t think of many other tech companies (other than biotech ones) that were so clearly, obviously, definitely evil from their very inception.

I don’t think that making Hotbot, AltaVista, and Yahoo look like chumps was particularly evil. This is terrible, yes, but I’m not going to rewrite history for the sake of claiming to have hated a big company before it was cool.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


As is the practice at Google, "Don't be evil" was deprecated in 2012, but the new one is still in early development.
That an advertisement company (that has taken global surveillance to a whole new level) managed, even for a while, to convince the world that they were not deeply and fundamentally evil is a wonder of the ages.
posted by bouvin at 7:25 AM on October 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know the world is fractally shitty but I can't help but read the Rubin part and think "Oh, this is slightly better." In '92 when I started very similar incidents at my first employer led to women fired and men still employed. (Obviously that still happens but Rubin at least was told to go elsewhere.)

I was more disillusioned by the accounts of so many senior people and founders dating subordinates.

In California [ . . . ] if, when you leave, you get a non-compete for 2 years along with 2 years' pay, I believe it's still enforceable in CA.

Googling (heh) around I was surprised how broad our protections are; I always thought with senior people and real contracts you could get enforceable noncompetes. Broadly not. It seems what you described though are *sometimes* enforceable as long as (1) they are signed after employment ends and (2) the payoff is "enough" in the eyes of a court.

But enforcement only matters if they want to break the contract. If you are paying someone enough each month to agree to not compete with you, then enforcement is moot since the money stops if they "win" any court case.
posted by mark k at 7:52 AM on October 26, 2018


What was he gonna do, take Android with him when he left?
posted by ejoey at 10:54 AM on October 26, 2018


Google's invention and unchecked expansion of the customers-are-the-product business model, copied to such great success ever since, is one of the underpinnings of what has gone wrong in the modern world.

I think you're wrong that Google was evil at its inception, and that gmail was designed in some way different than any other email system would have been in order to make it easier to mine, but you are absolutely right on with this.

Comparing 2014 Google to 2018 Google is a bit unfair because the leadership has completely turned over.
“We would never tell a complainant to stay quiet,” Chelsea Bailey, the head of human resources at X, said in a statement,
...as management continued to lie and gaslight victims in 2018.
posted by jjwiseman at 11:59 AM on October 26, 2018


Rubin has posted an oddly specific denial to Twitter. He says "I never coerced a woman to have sex in a hotel room". So... it was an AirBnB then?
posted by Nelson at 12:31 PM on October 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don’t think that making Hotbot, AltaVista, and Yahoo look like chumps was particularly evil.

No, PageRank was a nice innovation. It was the profiling of users which was right there in very early Google, that was the evil part. Using it for targeted advertising began even before the IPO.

I’m not going to rewrite history for the sake of claiming to have hated a big company before it was cool.

I'm old, and within the sliver of the tech community in which I worked at the time, Google was most definitely distrusted right out of the gate, in part for the massive amounts of mystery money that was fueling them in the early days... more than their press releases seemed to reckon... and in part for the focus on user preference targeting, which was a data scoop from the very beginning. Rumors of CIA and later NSA involvement were always attached to Google, even before it was dominant.

It's not revising history. It was right there all along, just not in wide view.

That said, even the most paranoid among us didn't expect the Google-fronted, industry-wide acceptance of profiling and targeting to become such a worldwide crisis as early as 2016. It really took FaceBook to give it a more obvious, well, face.
posted by rokusan at 1:14 PM on October 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


the massive amounts of mystery money that was fueling them in the early days...

What on earth are you talking about?

Google's investment funding is no mystery, it's long been well documented. $1.1M from four angel investors, $25M Series A, $10M strategic from Yahoo. That's all the investment. The rest of Google's money pre-IPO came from selling services. The 2000 search deal from Yahoo was enough revenue to make Google (barely) profitable. AdWords launched the same year and made some money, but it was really the AdWords Plus launch in early 2002 that was the real money-printing machine.

It's not revising history.

Nah, because that would require evidence and documentation. This is just making stuff up and repeating Alex-Jones-style rumors.
posted by Nelson at 2:20 PM on October 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Meanwhile, back on topic: Google Workers Fume Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual Misconduct Claims. Gossipy article on internal reactions.
Other employees said they tried to calculate how many hours of their work would have gone toward generating the $90 million that Mr. Rubin obtained in his exit package
posted by Nelson at 7:06 PM on October 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Comparing 2014 Google to 2018 Google is a bit unfair because the leadership has completely turned over.

Many of the people who enabled Rubin's predatory behavior still work for Google. Pichai could fire their sorry asses today (or preferably whenever he first learned of this, which I'm guessing was probably a while ago). That he hasn't tells you everything you need to know about any supposed culture change.
posted by jacobian at 8:53 PM on October 27, 2018 [3 favorites]




Alphabet executive named in NYT sexual misconduct exposé resigns - "An executive at Google parent company Alphabet’s X division has resigned after being named in a high-profile New York Times investigation into the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims, according to Axios. The executive, Rich DeVaul, held the title of “Director of Rapid Evaluation and Mad Science” at X, formerly known as Google X and the division responsible for Alphabet’s experimental “moonshots” projects like self-driving car unit Waymo and the Google Glass wearable headset. He did not receive an exit package of any sort, Axios reports."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Google employees worldwide are walking out today to protest handling of sexual misconduct
Employees are walking out of Google offices worldwide in protest today as a storm around the company’s handling of sexual harassment cases continues to gather strength. Organizers of the Google Walkout for Real Change tell The New York Times that more than 1,500 employees, mostly women, are planning to walk out from more than 60 percent of Google’s offices at 11:10AM as timezones roll around the world.
posted by octothorpe at 3:05 AM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]




@googlewalkout, a Twitter account collecting photos, etc from the protest. It looks quite big. When I posted the first announcement a couple of days ago it was "a group of more than 200 engineers". Photos show well more than 200 in each of Zürich, Dublin, and London. It's not even daybreak in Mountain View yet.

List of changes being demanded
1. An end to Forced Arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination for all current and future employees.
2. A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.
3. A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.
4. A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.
5. Elevate the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations directly to the Board of Directors. Appoint an Employee Rep to the Board.
posted by Nelson at 6:41 AM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Google staff walk out over women's treatment. BBC article with a lot of context for the protest.
posted by Nelson at 7:26 AM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Went out and saw a huge contingent from the Pittsburgh Google office marching past. My office is one floor down from Google's in the same building.
posted by octothorpe at 8:23 AM on November 1, 2018


These protests have been extraordinary. 47 offices so far and there are thousands of folks protesting from Google New York. The big one should be Mountain View HQ at 11am local time.
posted by Nelson at 9:43 AM on November 1, 2018




Tech Workers Need to Keep Organizing. Despite their often-high salaries, tech workers are workers. And like any other kind of worker, to advocate for their interests on the job, they need to get organized.
Tens of thousands of Google workers in over forty offices around the world recently walked off the job to protest their employer’s handling of sexual harassment claims. Collectively, they are demanding an end to Google’s culture that has fostered sexual harassment and abuse. Their demands not only include more transparency around harassment incidents but also a commitment to end gender inequities in pay and opportunity, among other issues in the company.

This protest against leadership in tech and others in recent years, signals a realization among tech workers that their interests and values differ vastly from those of their bosses, and that the only way to fight for their demands is to organize.

Today, the fight centers on the rampant sexism within these tech giants. But tech workers can and should fight the oppression and exploitation both within their companies and inflicted by their companies with the technology they build.

To do so, tech workers must first realize that they too, despite their often-high salaries and office perks, are workers. And like any other kind of worker, to advocate for their interests on the job, they need to get organized.
posted by homunculus at 8:36 PM on November 15, 2018


After 20,000 workers walked out, Google said it got the message. The workers disagree. "Recode’s Kara Swisher talks with six of the organizers of the Nov. 1 protests, who say the company’s response has been deeply inadequate."
posted by Nelson at 8:22 AM on November 21, 2018


« Older The library was a map of my life as a reader, and...   |   for want of a nail... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments