San Francisco, Aug 30 (IANS) In a startling revelation, a former Google lawyer has claimed that "blatant womanising and philandering" was commonplace among some Google executives and the company's chief legal officer David Drummond who had an affair with her -- resulting in a baby born in 2007 -- cheated on her.
Writing in a post on Medium, Jennifer Blakely said Drummond was well aware that their relationship was in violation of Google's new policy which went from "discouraging" direct-reporting-line relationships to outright banning them.
"Still, he never told anyone he worked for that we were pregnant," she wrote.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Drummond said "I take a very different view about what happened" and that he "won't be getting into a public back and forth about these personal matters".
According to Blakely, she was hired to work in Google's legal department as a Senior Contracts Manager before the company went public in 2001 and worked for Drummond who was Google's general counsel at the time.
"Drummond was married and had a son but almost none of us had met his wife. The people in Google's legal department were very close and in 2004, at my birthday party at the W in San Francisco, David reserved a suite to host an 'after party.'"
"It was there, that night he told me how he wanted more children. I urged to him to have one with his wife but he demurred and said that would never happen because he was estranged from her, which admittedly I already knew - he was the only married one in attendance without his spouse," said Blakely.
Blakely first described her affair with Drummond in a 2018 New York Times article.
"After our son was born, I received a call from HR notifying me that one of us would have to leave the legal department where Drummond was now Chief Legal Officer, so I transferred to the sales department despite having zero experience in sales.
Drummond offered to help her out financially on a monthly basis so she could leave her job in sales.
"I felt confident that he loved us and would protect us and so I quit Google," Blakely wrote.
According to The Verge, Google declined to answer questions about the allegations, including whether Drummond violated company policy.
"In October of 2008, still living together, David and I attended a dinner in Palo Alto with other Google employees, many from the legal department. During dinner, our babysitter called to say our son was sick so I went home and David said he would be right behind me.
"Several hours later, I received a call from Chris Chin, the Associate General Counsel and a friend, who told me that Drummond had taken two other women who worked for him in the legal department to San Francisco. I called him several times but he didn't answer his phone.
"Finally, I sent him a text message asking him when we could expect him home. He responded, 'Don't expect me back. I'm never coming back.' And he didn't".
Blakely said Blakely began an affair with his 'personal assistant' who he moved into one of his new homes.
"He had another affair with my former colleague at Google, the woman he left us for on that night in October 2008".
"Women that I worked with at Google who have spoken to me since the New York Times article have told me how offended they were by the blatant womanizing and philandering that became common practice among some (but certainly not all) executives, starting at the very top".
Google has been hit by a couple of high-profile sexual harassment cases.
Google reportedly paid $105 million to Andy Rubin and another former executive of Indian-origin Amit Singhal as exit package after they were accused of sexual harassment in 2014.
Singhal was Senior Vice President at Google Search while Rubin was head of Android at Google.
Singhal later joined the rival company Uber. He stepped down as Uber's Senior Vice President of Engineering in 2017 after the sexual harassment details reached the ride-hailing giant.
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google has so far terminated 48 people for sexual harassment.
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