Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A former high-level Google executive says he was pushed out after promoting human rights at the company, as leadership pushed plans for a censored Chinese search engine.
Ross LaJeunesse says company executives were dead set on entering China with some kind of censored search engine, despite comments from Google saying the project was always an experiment. “They are determined to do this,” he says he realized as executives made decisions about the project without him and other colleagues. “They don’t want to hear what I had to say.”
LaJeunesse spent 11 years at Google and served as its head of international relations, making him likely the highest-ranking former executive to dissent from the company. In his role, he oversaw human rights…