Google bows to radical workers

The Wall Street Journal

The biggest danger Google faces now comes from its own employees, said Holman Jenkins Jr. A group of employees calling themselves the Tech Workers Coalition want to substitute their “political hobbyhorses” for their employer’s business interests. Google brought this upon itself with “its ill-considered practice of sponsoring internal debate and breast-beating about political and cultural topics.” The protesters got Google to walk away from a Pentagon deal for Google’s AI technology. Amazon and Microsoft got similar demands from employees, and both companies “used the opportunity to speak out against Silicon Valley attempts to treat the U.S. military as a pariah customer.” But Google

acquiesced to protests and then got more, this time about “letting executives leave with nest eggs intact after being accused of inappropriate sexual conduct.” In response, “Google’s leaders conspicuously put their tails between their legs.” That won’t be the end of the demands. Google’s radicals hope to use “neo-Puritanism in the workplace” as a kind of “broom to sweep middle-aged white men out of the company”—including founder Sergey Brin. When Google went public, its bosses insisted on shielding their voting rights from shareholders to “make brave, long-term decisions without concern for short-term market reaction.” It’s time for them to show some of that bravery now.