Sources detail Google's lackluster response to the BLM movement, which one employee said was to “isolate the black employees” to vent without structural changes
they were essentially “dead” links.https://www.nbcnews.com/ ... @hypervisible : Google, yes fucking GOOGLE, sent an email to employees w/ resources “for allies who are looking for ways to help” on matters of racial injustice. But 2 of the 3 courses offered are “basically links to a dead website” and no sign-up is possible. 🤬 https://www.nbcnews.com/... Liz Fong-Jones / @lizthegrey : We see this over and over again. The solution isn't more support groups and trying to get people content with the status quo, the solution is change. But change, people aren't willing to do :( https://twitter.com/... Shannon Bond / @shannonpareil : “I feel as though instead of only distracting black Googlers with floods of emails, I wish they would email white Googlers to tell them to check themselves, check their privilege, understand that their words can hurt, etc.” https://www.nbcnews.com/... great work by @aprilaser April Glaser / @aprilaser : Google employees pointed clear inequities at that fall along racial lines that the company could begin to address, like in its massive contractor workforce. Instead they complain Google is sending white employees to a “dead website” about Allyship https://www.nbcnews.com/... April Glaser / @aprilaser : SCOOP: Google's internal response to the ongoing protests have included trainings for “Allyship” that aren't actually available and the company has “corralled and isolated” Black employees to vent without making much needed structural changes, sources say https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Google's CEO sent an all-staff email with resources “for allies who are looking for ways to help” with issues of racial injustice. When staffers actually clicked on a couple of the pages, “it basically links to a dead website,” said one Google employee. https://www.nbcnews.com/... April Glaser / @aprilaser : Black employees are calling on Google to reinstate anti-racist diversity trainings the company has cut. And Google says it's consulting Black employees about what resources it should provide for white employees https://www.nbcnews.com/... Olivia Solon / @oliviasolon : Ten current and former Google employees describe dissatisfaction among some black employees about the company's response to the ongoing protests - by @aprilaser https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's response to the 2020 BLM moment is landing in a company already shaped by worker activism: the walkout by 20K employees the prior year had pushed internal dissent into the open, and protests like the ~20 employees who staged a sit-in during staffers' interrogations showed HR disputes were now public events. Against that backdrop, sources describe a response built on allyship emails whose training links pointed to dead websites and on sessions that isolated Black employees to vent rather than change anything.
First-order effects
- Google's Black employees are left without functioning anti-racist trainings — resources they say the company itself cut — while leadership absorbs criticism that its allyship email was largely symbolic.
- The reporting hands Google's internal activist networks fresh evidence for their case that management responds to racial complaints with process rather than policy.
Second-order effects
- Google's rapid follow-up — a racial equity task force created within a day of the story — shows reputational pressure from employee-facing reporting forcing visible structural gestures.
- The pattern compounds across years: employees later describe [[a:963916|HR offering counseling and medical leave instead of addressing racism and sexism complaints]], and staff allege willful ignoring of caste bias after a presentation was canceled, eroding trust in the same channels meant to absorb grievances.
Third-order effects
- If the cycle holds — symbolic response, backlash, task force, repeat — tech worker activism shifts from one-off walkouts to sustained documentation of how companies handle discrimination claims, with retention of Black and Latinx hires becoming the measurable test of diversity vows.
- Regulators and courts increasingly become the venue where these internal failures land, as individualized HR remedies prove unable to resolve systemic complaints.
The trend: Tech companies are converging on performative crisis responses to racial-justice pressure — emails, groups, and task forces over structural change — while employee activism documents the gap between commitments and outcomes.