A growing number of Black Google employees are reportedly unhappy with how the company responded to the George Floyd protests, and criticized its scaling back of diversity programs

• A growing number of Black Google employees are unhappy about the way the company has responded to the George Floyd protests, according to a new report.
• Employees accused the company of "consoling" Black employees rather than working harder to teach white employees about systemic racism.
• Links to courses on allyship and racial bias, shared by executives with employees over email, reportedly didn't work.
• Do you work at Google? You can contact this reporter securely using encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or encrypted email (hslangley@protonmail.com).

A growing number of Black Google employees are unhappy with the way the company has responded to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to a new report from NBC News.

While CEO Sundar Pichai and other Google executives acknowledged the protests in internal memos and pledged to better support Black employees, some Googlers have accused the company of being lackluster in its response to the George Floyd protests and its own diversity efforts.

For example, employees said that links to courses on allyship shared in emails by CEO Sundar Pichai and other executives, which Business Insider previously reported on, weren't actually available when they clicked through.

Google told NBC it was not true that these courses were not available, but also said that employees who weren't able to enroll in a session could join a waitlist. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The report also said that "hundreds" of employees on the company's Black Googler Network message board have criticized the company for cutting its anti-racism programs.

Google employees reportedly criticized Google for putting its focus on "consoling black workers" instead of actively working to teach white employees about systemic racism.

"Just about every leader it seems has sent emails to the black community saying that they stand in solidarity with us," read one of those messages, per the report.

"I feel as though instead of only distracting black Googlers with floods of emails, I wish they would email white Googlers to tell them to check themselves, check their privilege, understand that their words can hurt, etc. I want white Googlers to be on these emails as well."

Some Googlers also called for the company to bring back Sojourn, the diversity program that Google ended in 2018.

They also accused the company of making it difficult for employees to learn about racial bias at work. Internal Google pages linking to resources on diversity had reportedly been redirected to the external website which features Google's annual diversity report.

One current Google employee told NBC that the company's response has been to "basically corral and isolate the black employees into one room and have them vent and talk to each other in the name of community support."

Alphabet, Google's parent company, has long delivered poor diversity numbers.

Black employees comprised 3.7% of Alphabet's workforce last year, according to the company's latest diversity report, and while it has made improvements over time, they have been very incremental.