How Google lost the 'war for the hearts and minds' of its employees: Q&A with Claire Stapleton

Claire Stapleton was nicknamed "the Bard of Google" while at the company.

Courtesy of Claire Stapleton Claire Stapleton led the 2018 Google walkouts over the company's handling of sexual misconduct allegations.

Her new book, "Don't be Evil," captures her time at Google and the "fake promises" of Google life.

She talked to Business Insider about Google's obsession with its image, worker power, and more.

In 2018, Claire Stapleton helped spearhead a walkout of around 20,000 Google employees .

The protest was a response to a New York Times story detailing how the company had paid multimillion-dollar exit packages to executives accused of sexual misconduct.

Now she's back with a memoir, "Don't Be Evil," that pulls back the curtain on her time in the trenches at Google.

It comes as the company faces renewed employee activism over its work with the Pentagon and ICE , and departing talent as it reshuffles its AI leadership .

Stapleton joined Google in 2007 and worked on internal communications, where her quippy, humorous companywide emails earned her the internal nickname "the Bard of Google." At the time of the mass employee walkouts, Stapleton was a marketing manager at Google-owned YouTube.

She left Google in 2019, writing at the time that she believed the company had retaliated against her over her activism.

In many ways, Stapleton helped shape Google's image internally.

She talked to Business Insider about those early days at the tech giant, which, while successful in its aims to organize the world's information, later found its utopian ideals undermined by corporate realities.

Google vowed not to become a conventional company, but sticking to that promise proved harder than its founders may have anticipated.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.