In August, the company handed down new “community guidelines” that prohibited employees from insulting one another on internal forums and “disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story.” Many employees saw it as a way to stifle the internal debate that had long defined the company.

Then, this month, two Google employees were placed on administrative leave over possible violations of company rules. According to a memo circulated internally and obtained by CNBC, some employees believed the administrative leave was a form of retaliation because the two suspended workers had engaged in activism at the company.

Google said one of the employees had searched for, gained access to and shared sensitive documents, though other employees have questioned the documents’ sensitivity. The company said the second suspended employee had set up email alerts to track the calendars of several Google officials, which made them feel unsafe, but did not say that setting up such alerts broke company rules.

Mr. Pichai’s announcement about the staff meetings came on the heels of a particularly contentious meeting last month when employees challenged management about the browser extension and the hiring of a former Department of Homeland Security official, who had defended a version of the White House’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries.

In leaked audio of the meeting, reported earlier by The Washington Post, Mr. Pichai said that Google was struggling with how to adapt the principles of openness to a global behemoth with more than 100,000 employees and a roughly equivalent number of contractors.

Last month, Google management in Zurich caused an uproar when it tried to cancel an employee discussion about unionization and proposed its own discussion about labor laws and employee rights. In September, a small group of contractors that work for Google voted to unionize with the United Steelworkers.

Some Google employees oppose their colleagues’ organizing efforts and believe that Mr. Pichai hasn’t gone far enough in reining in the chaos that they say the organizers have created. And most Google employees, even those active in efforts to organize co-workers, appear to be skeptical of trying to create a formally certified union.