Staff have allegedly been involved in abusive arguments as tensions rise

Google workers are at each other’s throats over leaks emerging from the search engine giant, according to a former senior employee.

Jack Poulson, a former research scientist at Google, has described a culture in which the “number one priority” among senior managers is to stop leaks to the media.

Employees at the company’s headquarters near San Jose, California, are encouraged to monitor their colleagues and list on a web page within Google called “Stopleaks” any confidential information that they see externally. Anyone who is caught revealing information to the press is fired.

Tensions between employees over leaks to the press have also resulted in foul-mouthed arguments, Mr Poulson revealed. During a question and answer session at a company-wide meeting, a senior engineer took the microphone