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Good morning. Fortune tech writer Danielle Abril filling in for Adam today.
Last week, Google’s parent Alphabet hit another big milestone. The company reached a market cap of $1 trillion just before the market closed on Thursday. Alphabet joins two other U.S. companies, Microsoft and Apple, in the exclusive club of the world’s most valuable companies. (Amazon was also once in the coveted group but has since dropped in value.)
But while Google, which raked in $136.8 billion in revenue in 2018, instills more and more confidence in investors, it’s plagued by rising dissent among its employees. With a new trillion-dollar feather in its cap, the burning question remains: How important is it for Alphabet to fix its internal culture clash?
If you ask Googlers, the answer is extremely. Employees have been outspoken about various issues including the company’s work on secret projects like a censored search engine for China and its reportedly poor handling of sexual harassment claims. In November, Google fired four activist employees, claiming that they broke company policies. The employees deny the allegations, saying the company was retaliating against their organizing work.
In the latest chapter of the culture war, on Jan. 2, Google’s former head of international relations Ross LaJeunesse wrote a Medium post detailing the company’s alleged dwindling concern for human rights and its mismanagement of diversity and inclusion issues.
“I’m not just telling a story of, ‘Gee, look at this shitty company that acts a different way,’” he told me a day after his post. “I’ve lived through the transformation. I didn’t change. Google changed.”
The situation got even stickier after Alphabet chief legal officer David Drummond recently stepped down following Alphabet’s investigation of the executive’s alleged inappropriate relationships with coworkers.
Meanwhile, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has spent the last
several weeks transitioning from his former role as CEO of Google and will now
ultimately be charged with resolving employees’ concerns.
I spoke to a few former Googlers following the announcement of the change in leadership. While they relayed confidence in Pichai’s technical prowess and business acumen, some worried he isn’t available to handle some of the more sensitive issues as it relates to the company’s culture. (“There is … no better person to lead Google and Alphabet into the future,” the letter announcing his new role read.)
I’ll be interested in whether Pichai addresses any of the company’s culture concerns when Alphabet announces its third-quarter earnings on Feb. 3. But my bet is he’ll likely stick to what investors want to know: the bottom line.
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Speaking of Google and parent company Alphabet, they finished at number seven on Fortune’s 2020 list of the World’s Most Admired Companies, which was released today. Tech dominated, as it has in recent years, with Apple topping the list, followed by Amazon and Microsoft.
Danielle Abril
Twitter: @DanielleDigest
Email: danielle.abril@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
