Ex-Employees Sue Google For Violating ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause

EMountain View, California-based Google is being sued. This time, by three of its former employees, who claim that their treatment goes against the company’s “don’t be evil” clause in its employee code of conduct. Google’s once-famous “Don’t be evil” motto is still there in those words in a clause in the contract that employees have to sign. The employees claim that they were fired for exercising Google’s “Don’t be evil”clause for calling out “evil” doings of Google itself.

According to Rebecca Rivers, Paul Duke, and Sophie Waldman were fired from Google within minutes of each other on November 25, 2019. Google says that these employees leaked information and had used “systematic searches” for information “outside the scope of their jobs.” However, the three engineers deny leaking any information and say that the real reason is their protest against the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

At the time, CBP was caging migrants and separating parents from children, but Google had decided to sell cloud software to the agency. All three software engineers circulated a company-wide petition asking Google to not work with CBP or the Immigration and Customs Enforcements agencies.