Google's latest, explosive #MeToo claims are yet another sign of a destructively permissive culture built up over years

Troy Wolverton/Business Insider

Google employees walked out in September 2018 to protest the firm's policies on harassment.

• Google has been rocked once again by explosive #MeToo allegations after former employee Jennifer Blakely detailed her affair with the firm's top lawyer, David Drummond.
• In a Medium post, Blakely alleged that the pair had a son together, and that Drummond subsequently abandoned her and struck up an affair with another Google colleague. Drummond hasn't commented.
• Blakely's first-person story follows numerous, lurid accounts of senior male Google execs having extramarital affairs with junior colleagues, or just outright harassing women.
• Google has had a permissive culture around workplace relationships for years, as exemplified by some of its leadership, and that culture now looks destructive in a post-#MeToo world.
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Google's culture is, once again, under the spotlight after another set of allegations from a former female employee about a powerful, male senior executive abusing his power to have multiple extramarital affairs with colleagues.

Jennifer Blakely is a former Google legal manager who has written an astonishing account on Medium of her time at the company, and of her affair with Alphabet's chief legal officer David Drummond.

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She outlined how she and Drummond had a consensual relationship while he was married, had a child together, but that her life changed drastically after she was shifted out from the legal department, struggled with her new role, and decided to leave. Drummond, she alleged, abandoned the relationship suddenly, struck up an affair with another Google employee, and continued seeing his son "exclusively on his terms."

Drummond and Google are yet to comment on Blakely's version of events.

Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images

Google SVP David Drummond.

The New York Times initially reported on some of Blakely's allegations against Drummond in October 2018. Her story, and those of others at Google, sparked huge employee protests last year over the company's treatment of sexual misconduct allegations. It forced CEO Sundar Pichai into revealing that 48 people had been fired from Google over such allegations.

That same New York Times story, cast new light on Google's generally permissive culture around relationships, which resulted in some lurid accounts of several male executives abusing their power.

Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt once kept a mistress as a company consultant. Android chief Andy Rubin reportedly received a $90 million payoff after sexual misconduct allegations. And it was widely reported in 2014 that Google cofounder Sergey Brin split from his wife and had an affair with a younger coworker at Google. Finally, Richard DeVaul, formerly a Google X director, offered a potential employee a back rub during what she thought was a job interview. DeVaul subsequently resigned.

This begins to look like a pattern, not least because Google hasn't punished many of these high-profile men.

Schmidt didn't resign from Alphabet's board until May this year - and there was no suggestion it was related to any of the accusations against him. Google invested in Andy Rubin's subsequent company, Playground Global, after he left the firm. Drummond is one of the most senior and the highest paid executives at Alphabet, even earning more than Google CEO Pichai. Sergey Brin has become more elusive at internal events, but has been speaking at all-hands meetings this summer and remains on the firm's board.

Read more: The Google exec at the centre of explosive #MeToo allegations is one of the highest paid at the firm, earning $47 million

A Twitter account for the Google protesters, commented on Blakely's story: "This is a powerful first person account about the long term effects of #metoo and the systemic culture of treating people like objects at the highest levels of Google. This hurts all of us - of all genders and at all levels of the company."

Google did respond to last year's protests by overhauling its sexual misconduct policies, ending forced arbitration, increasing training for executives, and improving reporting tools.

But the latest shocking claims from Blakely, the trickling departure of the Google Walkout organizers, new workplace discussion rules that could halt similar protests from bubbling up in the future, and the fact that women remain severely outnumbered in the highest echelons of the company (it has only two female board members out of 10) suggest cultural change has a long way to go.

Contact this reporter on sghosh@businessinsider.com.

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