You mean internal-public, I assume. Memegen isn't public AFAIK.
> ... because of their privately-held political views
It's hard to get called out for privately-held political views. Things you do in public, though, have consequences.
> Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs
Is that a constraint we should extend to owners of companies also? Or is flexing muscle to advance personal ideological beliefs something only reserved for Fortune 500 owners? Google was outspokenly gay-friendly before that became a mainstream opinion in the US, to give a concrete example.
No, this is just wrong! If I'm making political statements in the public square (e.g. Twitter) then people should respect that as long as it's not something outlandish.
The problem is US politics is just too visceral.
In the eyes of these mobs, being a Trump supporter is akin to supporting the Nazis, and they rile everyone up to harass somebody who probably just wants lower taxes or border control.
Google's treatment of Kay Coles James for example disgraced the company.
https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-ant...
Google is one of the most LGBT-friendly companies on Earth. It's not going to lose this spirit because it has someone from a milquetoast place like Heritage on some non-binding AI advisory board. The Kay Cole's James outrage mob was an ideological flex, not a genuine concern for the wellbeing of LGBT employees in the company.
The Kay Cole's James affair is a perfect example of the activist dynamic at Google: the activists claim to be protesting vulnerable people, but what they're actually doing is trying to sideline, delegitimize, and silence their political opponents.
> ideological flex
I'm not sure why you say that. the Googlers I corresponded with at the time had some serious questions about how this seemed to operate in contradiction to the company's goals. and if I recall correctly, the company was undergoing management shake up at the time, so I don't think it was an unfounded concern.
Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.
Not infrequently the consequences are literally disastrous and/or fatal. (See also Boeing, Lehman, Enron. HP at its worst, and many many more.)
What exactly gives corporations the moral authority to act like this?
Is it simply that large accumulations of money somehow render other moral concerns irrelevant, as if by magic?
I mean, maybe. They'd ban them if the few people were the owners and the SVPs.
If they company did, they'd be within their rights to. The only problem would be all the money they'd leave on the table. Usually (1), that's been the backstop against corporations operating with their private ethics on their sleeve; corps that make a habit of leaving money on the table tend to get left behind by the market.
If Google started banning GCP use for ethical reasons, some other company would step up to fill the gap; no doubt.
(1) Usually. Chik-fil-A supports conversion therapy for LGBTQ people and Hobby Lobby's owners have used their assets for "art acquisition" that was illegal.
Are you saying that this extreme "personal ideological belief" you just stated is applicable to every single company on the planet?
These activists present their activities as "union organizing","transparency and ethics", "whistleblowing, and other sweet-sounding and broadly-liked labels, but in reality, what they're doing is not any of these things. What these activists are actually doing is trying to turn the company into a vehicle for advancing their fringe vision for a Utopian society. And if you know your history, you should run away screaming from anyone trying to engineer a Utopia.
Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Companies should be mission focused. Coinbase got it right where Google got it wrong, and now Google's activist chickens are coming come to roost.