CEO Sundar Pichai says he has no regrets over firing James Damore, for criticising Google's diversity policy
22 Jan 2018
Indian-born Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he had no regret over firing James Damore last year, for criticising the tech giant over its diversity policy.
In an interview with MSNBC, when asked about Google's decision to fire Damore, Pichai said. "I don't regret it. It was the right decision".
"The last thing we do when we make decisions like this is look at it with a political lens," Pichai told the TV show hosts late on Friday.
Meanwhile, Damore who wrote a 10-page anti-diversity memo last year, filed a class-action lawsuit against Google this month, claiming that it discriminated against white men.
In his lawsuit filed in a California court, Damore said that Google "ostracised, belittled and punished" him and a fellow plaintiff.
He added that he and others who share his views at Google long have been "singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights".
Damore also wrote an op-ed titled "Why I Was Fired by Google" in the Wall Street Journal in August last year.
Pichai had earlier called Damore's memo ''offensive.''
Speaking in a live conversation with journalist and Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, MSNBC host Ari Melber, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in San Francisco, Pichai said the decision to fire Damore was about ensuring women at Google felt like the company was committed to creating a welcoming environment.
''I regret that people misunderstand that we may have made this for a political belief one way or another,'' Pichai said.
''It's important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make an inclusive environment.'' When pressed by Swisher on the issue of regret, Pichai stated more definitively, ''I don't regret it.'' Wojcicki, who has spoken publicly about how Damore's memo affected her personally, followed up with, ''I think it was the right decision.''
