Google CEO Sundar Pichai says he does not regret firing James Damore

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he doesn't  regret firing James Damore, Onetime Google engineer James Damore wrote a contentious 3,300-word memo in August that argued the gender gap in Silicon Valley is largely due to women and men being "biologically" different. Days later Google CEO Sundar Pichai fired Damore saying the engineer violated company rules.

Damore went on a media tour saying he believed he was fired from Google because his conservative political views didn't align with the rest of the company. And Pichai had to cancel a company all-hands meeting after some employees expressed concern about being harassed online.

       He regrets that people misunderstood it as a politically motivated even Speaking in a live conversation with journalist and Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, MSNBC host Ari Melber, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in San Francisco, Pichai said that the decision to fire Damore was about ensuring women at Google felt like the company was committed to creating a welcoming environment. When pressed by Swisher on the issue of regret, Pichai stated more definitively, “I don’t regret it.” Wojcicki, who has spoken publicly about how Damore’s memo affected her personally, followed up with, “I think it was the right decision.”

   Damore, who was fired back in August after his internal memo went viral, filed a lawsuit earlier this month alleging Google discriminates against white male conservatives. The crux of Damore’s memo was that Google’s diversity efforts are misplaced, that women may be biologically less suited to engineering and programming jobs in the tech industry, and that Google creates a hostile environment for conservatives.

In response to the memo, Pichai, who said back in August that Damore crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” made the decision with other top Google executives to fire him. “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” Pichai wrote in his statement. In response to the prospective legal action, a Google spokesperson said earlier this month, “We look forward to defending against Mr. Damore’s lawsuit in court.”