'Don't be evil' | Sacked Google staff say firm's mantra 'obliged them' to protest company actions

Former Google employees, who claim they were sacked for calling out what they felt was company wrongdoing, say their activism was simply following the tech giant’s famous “Don’t be evil” mantra.

Metro has reported on a lawsuit filed in America on behalf of a trio of former Google software engineers, Rebecca Rivers, Sophie Waldman, and Paul Duke, who were fired in November 2019.

The tech behemoth claims they were fired for leaking confidential information. Metro reported that an internal Google memo, issued at the time of Rivers, Waldman and Duke’s sackings, said they were let go for “clear and repeated violations of our data security policies” including “systematic searches for information outside the scope of their job”, which they deny.

Instead, the cohort claim they were sacked for speaking out against company actions they didn’t agree with, such as a controversial cloud computing contract with the Trump administration’s Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in 2019 – which has been linked to alleged human rights abuse at the US border points.