Google extends remote work option due to pandemic

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Google on Tuesday extended the option for its employees to work from home into next year due to the pandemic.

Returning to Google campuses will remain voluntary globally through January 10, with local offices given the discretion to decide when to require employees to return to their desks, according to chief executive Sundar Pichai.

"I’m happy to say that a large number of offices globally are already open for business, and we are welcoming back tens of thousands of Googlers on a voluntary basis," Pichai said.

"The road ahead may be a little longer and bumpier than we hoped, yet I remain optimistic that we will get through it together."

He promised Google workers 30 days' notice before they would have to return to their offices, and announced they would be able to take off an extra day in October and December as "reset days" to "rest and recharge."

Google, Facebook and other tech giants have delayed plans for workers to return to the campuses that were abandoned early in the pandemic in an effort to limit the spread of Covid-19. 

Tech firms have also instituted vaccine and mask requirements to make offices safer as the Delta variant surges in the US and other countries.

Agence France-Presse 

Google employees to walk out to protest treatment of women

SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of Google engineers and other workers are expected to walk off the job Thursday morning to protest the internet company’s lenient treatment of executives accused of sexual misconduct.

It is the latest expression of a backlash against men’s exploitation of female subordinates in a business, entertainment and politics. In Silicon Valley, women also are becoming fed up with the male-dominated composition of the technology industry’s workforce — a glaring imbalance that critics say fosters unsavory behavior akin to a college fraternity house.


The Google protest, billed “Walkout For Real Change,” is unfolding a week after a New York Times story detailed allegations of sexual misconduct about creator of its Android software, Andy Rubin. The report said Rubin received a $90 million severance package in 2014 even though Google concluded the sexual misconduct allegations against him were credible.

Rubin derided the Times story article as inaccurate and denied the allegations in a tweet.

The same story also disclosed allegations of sexual misconduct of other executives, including Richard DeVaul, a director at the same Google-affiliated lab that created far-flung projects such as self-driving cars and internet-beaming balloons. DeVaul had remained at the “X” lab after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced about him a few years ago, but he resigned Tuesday without severance, Google confirmed Wednesday.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized for the company’s “past actions” in an email sent to employees Tuesday. “I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel,” Pichai wrote. “I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society. and, yes, here at Google, too.”

The email didn’t mention the reported incidents involving Rubin, DeVaul or anyone else, but Pichai didn’t dispute anything in the Times story.


In an email last week, Pichai and Eileen Naughton, Google’s executive in charge of personnel issues, sought to reassure workers that the company had cracked down on sexual misconduct since Rubin’s departure four years ago.

Among other things, Pichai and Naughton disclosed that Google had fired 48 employees , including 13 senior managers, for “sexual harassment” in recent years without giving any of them severance packages.

But Thursday’s workout could signal that a significant number of the 94,000 employees working for Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. remained unconvinced the company is doing enough to adhere to Alphabet’s own edict urging all employees to “do the right thing .”

A Silicon Valley congresswoman tweeted her support of the Google walkout using the “metoo” hashtag that has become a battle cry for women fighting sexual misconduct. “Why do they think it’s OK to reward perpetrators & further violate victims?” asked Rep. Jackie Speier, who represents an affluent district where many of Google’s employees live. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google founder hopes Alphabet spells innovation

SAN FRANCISCO — Google founder Larry Page is hoping his newly created company, Alphabet, becomes synonymous with innovation.

In a Monday night appearance, Page described Alphabet as a way to give engineers and scientists the independence they need to develop breakthrough products that have little or nothing to do with Google’s Internet search and advertising business.

Along the way, Page hopes Alphabet will take the drudgery and bureaucracy out of work.

“Companies have pretty bad reputations,” Page told a dinner audience gathered in San Francisco for a forum presented by Fortune magazine. “It’s not like a lot of people wake up in the morning and say, ‘I want to go work for a company.’ They do it because they have to.”

Monday’s 20-minute appearance marked Page’s first public remarks since he announced in August that Alphabet would become Google’s holding company, as well as the parent of riskier ventures involved in self-driving cars, Internet-beaming balloons, Internet-connected appliances and medical research.

Page now oversees the hodgepodge of companies as Alphabet’s CEO. He turned over the Google CEO job to his top lieutenant, Sundar Pichai. Alphabet supplanted Google as a public traded stock in early October.

The idea for Alphabet’s name came from Google’s other founder, Sergey Brin, according to Page. Several other names were considered, Page said, but he declined to disclose them in case they are used for other subsidiaries. The new holding company will begin reporting Google’s financial results separately from its other subsidiaries, known as “other bets,” in January with the release of its fourth-quarter results.

Alphabet’s rudimentary name was chosen, Page said, because it isn’t supposed to overshadow Google or any of the other brands in its portfolio. “I didn’t want it to be too catchy,” Page said. “It’s really for employees, more than the customers.”

If there is a role model for Alphabet, Page said it would probably be Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company that billionaire Warren Buffet has built through acquisitions and investments in a wide variety of industries.

Alphabet could become like a Berkshire Hathaway, with a “technology, science and engineering bent,” Page said. Acquisitions will be part of Alphabet’s plan to expand, although Page indicated the company will probably focus on startups with interesting ideas and relatively few employees.

There are few other companies besides Berkshire Hathaway that Page wants to mimic. “I wish I could look at someone else and say, ‘I wish we were doing that,'” he said. TVJ

source: technology.inquirer.net