Google employees around the world are staging a mass walkout Thursday in protest of sexual misconduct.
It follows a bombshell New York Times report last week that named executives who had been accused of sexual misconduct, including Andy Rubin, the creator of the mobile operating system Android. Rubin denied any misconduct.
Thousands of workers are expected to take part in the protest, which calls for people in Google's offices to walk away from their desk at 11 a.m. in their respective time zone. Protesters are using the hashtag #GoogleWalkout. Employees in New York, London, Tokyo, and Berlin are among those to have already taken part.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he supported the protests and was listening to his staff. "We are aware of the activities planned for Thursday and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate," he said.
Business Insider is covering the Google walkout live. Refresh this page for updates.
Shona Ghosh and Sean Wolfe were on the scene in London and New York respectively. Matt Weinberger and Katie Canales were on the scene in San Francisco, and Troy Wolverton was on the scene in Mountain View.
"People are sharing stories about harassment, microaggressions, inefficient process, broken culture," said a Twitter user named Ted, who described himself as a Google privacy engineer.
Rainfall kept some Londoners indoors, but that did not stop them from making their feelings known.
Business Insider reporter Shona Ghosh was at Google's St Giles Street offices.
An employee taking part in the walkout told her: "I'm proud that we're now supporting everyone, and hopefully now gives them a voice which most seem to feel they have not had before."
She was told that workers at the Victoria office had a talk about the issues they're raising with management, including a call for a transparency report on sexual harassment.
After the protests in Europe, the east coast of America began making preparations. These signs showed the walkout would spill over into other areas of concern.
Project Maven was Google's now-abandoned plan to build artificial intelligence tools for the US military, which caused some employees to resign in protest.
Dragonfly is Google's codename for its plans to launch a censored search engine in China. It has sparked an internal war at the company, and also prompted a Google scientist to quit in protest.
Googlers Claire Stapleton, Tanuja Gupta, Meredith Whittaker, Celie O'Neil-Hart, Stephanie Parker, Erica Anderson, and Amr Gaber cowrote a piece in The Cut detailing their reasons for organising the walkout.
"The executive team has demonstrated through their lack of meaningful action that our safety is not a priority," they wrote.
30 minutes after the Valley View walkout began, the protest was still ongoing. Some employees had begun to file out, however.
"It was great," said one female Googler who declined to give her name, but had just come from the walkout in Mountain View. "it was the start of the movement."
Another female Googler wearing a teal ribbon on her shirt said she was "proud of all the women who got up there to tell their stories."
Some Mountain View Googlers remained after the bulk of the walkout had died down to talk to the press and continue to protest. One of those Googlers was Celie O’Neil-Heart, one of the organizers of the walkout.
O'Neil-Heart said the New York Times story about Rubin's exit package was the "$90 million straw that broke the camel's back." She said that although this news just recently came to light publicly, Googlers have been raising issues internally and the walkout "really represents a movement that's been at Google for a long time."
"We do feel heard (by management)," O'Neil-Heart said. "And we look forward to seeing action."
Pichai told Business Insider in a statement that management supported the protest:
"We let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for Thursday and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate," he said.
But a Google engineer named Liz Fong-Jones encouraged the press to shift their focus away from Pichai's support.
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