Google employees who leak official confidential information: unannounced products, internal company documents, etc can get fired. There's nothing shocking about that. That will get you fired at pretty much any workplace. These are not "whistleblower" leaks.

If you leak say, a private thread from internal mailing lists, you could lose your job, especially if it could harm other employees. If you summarize some issue, you probably are on steadier ground.

Google has a vibrant internal culture of criticism. Memegen has already leaked (https://gizmodo.com/5946769/google-workers-make-internal-mem...), execs and products get raked over the coals at weekly company wide meetings, there's actually internal comics that satirize company beliefs.

And yes, management doesn't always listen, probably the single biggest reason unionization might be needed in Silicon Valley, not for worker pay and benefits, which are already good, but to ensure management listens on other issues.

BTW, the TGIF transcript and meme leaks are the kinds that have ended up Doxxing employees and triggering harassment. The gizmodo link I put properly redacts the usernames, but other leaks have not.

The "doxxing employees" thing only carries so much weight with me, because I feel that your correspondence in a corporate environment which impacts billions of people should have accountability, and the corporate party cannot be entrusted with it.

People should not say things even in a private corporate setting that they would not be comfortable if was someday public. Not only can a lawsuit or investigation bring internal correspondence to light, but for instance, some of my correspondence could be FOIA'd! People fail to realize their corporate correspondence is not their private place, and treat it accordingly.

I do have a lot of sympathy for targeted folks like LGBT folks getting harassed, particularly after events like Damore and the related lawsuits and embedded posts/content. But in many cases, they are already publicly identifying their RL name, gender identity, and political positions on Twitter, for example. They weren't so much "doxxed", as they became higher profile due to having been in the news.

This sucks a lot, but we can't hide important information from the public based on the unfortunate reality that soul-sucking nightmare trolls chase every name that gets even the briefest of public attention... imagine if we took that approach/mindset with leaks coming out of the White House.

PS - I really wish more of Memegen was leaked/public. I can't count how many times a news story has led to the thought "darn, I wish I could see what Memegen looks like today".