A top Google exec pushed the company to commit to human rights. Then Google pushed him out, he says.

I changed my email from Yahoo because they were cooperating with Chinese authorities to find dissidents. Now I am sorry I have gmail, but it would really be an inconvenience to change it, esp. because I need it to get messages for my volunteer work with Tax-Aide. I recently had to spend time getting my current email updated for Tax-Aide. Don't want to try to change it right now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/02/top-google-exec-pushed-company-commit-human-rights-then-google-pushed-him-out-he-says/

By Nitasha Tiku
Jan. 2, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EST

For years, Google tasked Ross LaJeunesse with executing its plan to protect human rights in China, after Google announced a decade ago it would stop censoring search results there to safeguard security and free speech.

LaJeunesse took the mission to heart: He later devised a human rights program to formalize Google’s principles supporting free expression and privacy. He began lobbying for it internally in 2017 — around the time when the tech giant was exploring a return to China, in a stark reversal of its 2010 move that made its search engine unavailable there.

Now, the 50 year-old is alleging that Google pushed him out for it in April.

“I didn’t change. Google changed,” LaJeunesse, who was Google’s global head of international relations in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Post. “Don’t be evil” used to top the company’s mission statement. “Now when I think about ‘Don’t be evil,’ it’s been relegated to a footnote in the company’s statements.”

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In his initial pitch to Walker in June 2017, LaJeunesse mentioned that companies like Yahoo put a program in place only after a human rights disaster.

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