Google CEO Pichai cancels 'town hall' on gender dispute

After employee questions for management began to leak online from the firm’s internal messaging service.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has canceled an internal town hall meant to address gender discrimination on Thursday after employee questions for management began to leak online from the company’s internal messaging service.

Mr. Pichai said in an email to staff that several Google employees became fearful for their safety and grew concerned about being outed for speaking up at the town hall.

The town hall was meant to hear out employee grievances over a flare-up that has consumed Google for much of the week. It began last weekend after engineer James Damore circulated a memo that claimed biological gender differences helped explain why women are under-represented at the company.

And he was fired

Google fired Mr. Damore on Monday. The engineer has claimed he had a right to voice concerns over workplace conditions and filed a labour relations board complaint prior to being fired.

Google’s internal “Dory” system allows employees to ask questions and then vote on questions posed by other employees so managers can address the most pressing ones.

Wired magazine published some of the questions verbatim online Thursday. Screenshots of the questions with names attached had been leaked, although none with names had been published as of late Thursday, a Google spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, a graphic composed of the Twitter profiles of several Google employees who were gay, lesbian or transgender began to circulate online, assisted by conservative commentators such as former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos . That graphic drew hundreds of negative comments about the people and the company.