In this file photo, then Google Senior Vice President of Mobile Andy Rubin holds up a Google Android phone running on an Intel chip at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Google in a surprise disclosure on October 25, 2018 sent an email to employees saying it fired 48 people over sexual harassment after The New York Times reported the tech giant dismissed Rubin for sexual misconduct in 2014 and is still paying him a $90 million package. September 13, 2011.
Google said it fired 48 employees in the past two years, including 13 senior executives, as a result of sexual harassment allegations, citing "an increasingly hard line" on inappropriate conduct.
The US tech giant issued a statement on Thursday from chief executive Sundar Pichai in response to a New York Times report that Google paid Android creator Andy Rubin an exit package worth $90 million as he faced allegations of sexual misconduct. The article said Google covered up other claims of sexual harassment.
Google released an email sent to employees from Pichai stating that 48 people had been terminated for sexual harassment in the past two years, including 13 who were senior managers and above and that none received "an exit package."
"In recent years, we've made a number of changes, including taking an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority," Pichai said.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on stage during the annual Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View.
He added that the report on Rubin and others "was difficult to read" but he did not directly address the claims in the article.
"We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace," he said. "We want to assure you that we review every single complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct, we investigate and we take action."
Sam Singer, a spokesman for Rubin, rejected the allegations against him in a statement to AFP, saying Rubin left Google of his own accord to launch venture capital firm and technology incubator Playground.
Rubin went on to found smartphone company Essential. The Android operating system, which Google makes available to device makers free of charge, powers about 85 percent of the world's smartphones.
The New York Times cited court documents and interviews while reporting that Rubin was one of three senior executives that Google has shielded in the past decade after complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour.
The Times cited two unnamed Google executives as saying that then-chief executive Larry Page asked for Rubin's resignation after the company confirmed a complaint by a woman about a sexual encounter in a hotel in 2013.
A Google investigation found the woman's complaint credible, the Times reported.
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