Four of our colleagues took a stand and organized for a better workplace. This is explicitly condoned in Google’s Code of Conduct, which ends: “​​​​​​​And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right — speak up.” When they did, Google retaliated against them. Today, after putting two of them on sudden and unexplained leave, the company fired all four in an attempt to crush worker organizing.

Google hired a union-busting firm, so the olden days of The Pinkerton Detective Agency which never sleeps, the Homestead Strike, the Colorado Labor Wars, and other late 19th century and early 20th century battles between workers on one side, and factory owners, the government, and independent “security” agencies on the other, seem back in swing.

Not that it matters. Extremists will praise Google, centrists will excuse it away, and the rest will condemn Google, but keep using Google Search and Android anyway – and Google knows it.

In a corporatocracy, companies and their leaders are untouchable.