A Crisis Forces Google to Uphold Its Values While Fostering Debate<br />There are about 87,000 Google groups — essentially email lists formed around a central theme —<br />and more than 8,000 discussion groups like “misc” — short for miscellaneous — where employees debate and disagree on topics ranging from the optimal temperature in the office to the brand of laundry detergent the company should use for washing employee towels.<br />Memegen, Misc, Internal G+ and our many discussion groups are a big part of our culture — they keep us honest —<br />but like any conversation amongst colleagues, we should keep it respectful,” wrote Brian Katz, a Google director of protective services, investigations and intelligence.<br />On Thursday, as Google prepared to hold a companywide meeting to discuss the memo, questions submitted<br />by employees for the event on another internal system called Dory started to appear in the media.<br />Google’s embrace of openness was tested a few years ago when an engineer created a spreadsheet for employees to share salary information.<br />Memegen, an internal forum that uses images overlaid with funny captions, was filled with irreverent posts<br />that openly mocked how an email discussing the memo from Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, had leaked to the media so quickly.<br />A number of employees sent emails to Mr. Pichai and told managers<br />that they planned to skip the meeting because they were worried that they would face online reprisals for speaking out.
