Him being toxic for the workplace culture and nobody wants to work with him isn't enough?
The key to large organization management is control: they are doing this quickly before anything else happens. His presence both legitimises his point of view, and acts as a rallying point. If others are sufficiently emboldened, they may also act out. If they start organizing together, this has the potential of rapidly turn into a long standing issue for google.
Is that so? Do the complaints of numerous other employees not demonstrate some level of toxicity?
Edit -- thanks for helping me earn my karma today. It's delicious the way y'all are so eager to downvote me instead of engaging. It's almost like you think I have an ulterior motive being masked by a veneer of good-faith engagement or something. I wonder where I might have gotten that idea from...
When you get laid off, they give you 30 days to find another department to work in. There's no reason why he wasn't afford the same, if his departure was due to co-workers not wanting to work with him any more.