Whether this was a legitimate policy change or a change simply made to find reasons to fire activists, I don't know. But, it was made clear many months ago that digging around to access docs outside your spec could result in a firing.
From the outside it seems like a very legitimate policy change. If my co-workers are stalking my calendar to find meetings they politically disagree with so they can pressure me and/or leak it to the press, well that's super creepy. I think this is a perfect example of why "full transparency" can actually be conducive to a toxic working environment.
Even if it wasn't formally against the rules the intent behind that type of stalking should get anyone who engages in it fired. It's literally harassment. I think Google's change in policy is for the best here as it codifies common sense.
More on topic, I'll note that nowhere did anyone use the word "politics" except you.
> Rivers had said she was being targeted for protesting against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is testing a Google cloud product. Berland was active in protests against YouTube for its handling of hate speech policies.
As others have stated in this thread, they were apparently policing people's meetings around these topics. If you don't like your company's legal clients, quit. Do not stalk your co-workers, harass them and leak info about them to the press.
None of the four employees in question have been accused of leaking anything to the press.
Google's statement insinuates many things that aren't actually true.
Do you have any sources that back that statement up? Google's accusations are very explicit about what these people were doing:
> To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs — repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies. This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally.
Are they? If you can quote for me where Google actually states these people leaked material, I'll concede the point, but they don't. Google says two things:
1. These four individuals searched for information that was outside of their job scope
2. Information these individuals searched for (along with other information) was shared externally
They don't claim that the individuals that did 1 also did 2, in fact the statement is carefully worded to not make that claim, but to still heavily imply it. The untrue (or at least, unsubstantiated) insinuation in this case is that any of these people leaked things to the press.
Were this criminal court, the burden of proof would be on Google to show that people who did the information gathering did do the leaking.
This is, of course, the court of public opinion, so one's own biases will come into play on who one assumes is telling the truth. But Google's internal statement (at least, what of it we've seen) doesn't connect the dots tightly enough to eliminate reasonable doubt.
The leaking was not explicitly blamed on the people that were fired.
> We want to be clear that none of these individuals were fired for simply looking at documents or calendars during the ordinary course of their work.
> To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work [...] This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally.
"These individuals subsequently leaked some of this material."
But the statement doesn't use this very natural wording, it uses a strange, highly passive, construction. One is left to wonder why. To be fair, you're not the only person who fell for this trick, I know a lot of very smart people who didn't notice this until it was pointed out, but it is a trick.
Edit: replying to your other comment, You're asking me to prove a negative, that these individuals didn't leak anything. Why should I do that when they haven't even been explicitly accused of having leaked something? No one, not the employees, and not google, as claimed they leaked anything. Google claimed that some stuff was leaked. This is true. And yes, its hard to read Google's statement and come to that conclusion. That's intentional it was worded the way it was very carefully. That's the point. They're being duplicitous.
Is there anything beyond the semantics of the Google statement that makes you feel that it's false?
To be clear, I believe that everything Google has actually stated is factual. You're just drawing wrong conclusions from partial information. So in one sense, no, because Google hasn't lied. I don't have any proof that I could share. But yes, I have strong reasons to believe the things I'm stating.
As an aside, are you a native English speaker? There's some very interesting cultural aspects when assigning blame. In American English, its the norm to assign blame directly "John leaked the documents.", whereas in other cultures/languages, a passive structure is more common "John had the documents. The documents were leaked." This would be a common and correct way of blaming John for leaking something in some cultures, but in English it isn't.
Presumably Google and its lawyers are primarily English speakers.
Out of curiosity if you think that the statement is true, but constructed in a way that hides information, what do you think actually happened? If I understand your position it looks something like this:
1. The four people mentioned setup watches on people's calendars, went looking for information on people... the targets of their searches weren't part of their every day work life.
2. They shared that information with someone (no one knows who) but not the press or externally.
3. The people who had the information shared with them then leaked it externally.
4. Google found out and fired the original four people from step 1 and wrote a memo deliberately masking step 2.
It's possible the above is accurate (please let me know if I got your position incorrect), but I don't think the wording of Google's announcement alone is enough to prove that. I'm apt to take it at its face value, especially because step 1 is by far the worst part in my mind and that doesn't seem to be in doubt.
That's why I'm curious if you have some inside knowledge or something (your bio says you work at Google).