The 'father of the internet' gave a thumbs up to the Google employees who walked out to protest sexual misconduct policies

Troy Wolverton/Business Insider

Some 20,000 Google workers walked out of their offices last month to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment claims.

• Vint Cerf, an internet pioneer who works at Google, said he supports employees who staged a walkout last month.
• The walkout, which was to protest Google's handing of sexual misconduct allegations, sent the right message, Cerf said told Business Insider.

The Google workers who took part in a walkout last month to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment claims have a high-profile supporter in its executive ranks.

The demonstrations delivered the "right message" to Google managers, said Vint Cerf, a vice president at the company and its chief internet evangelist.

"The people who said the company should feel accountable for the misbehavior of employees at all levels in the organization - that's the basic message that that walkout delivered - I think that is the right message for those of us in management at Google to hear," he said.

Read this: Google's famous Googleplex headquarters was the epicenter for its worldwide walkout over gender discrimination - here's what it was like on the scene

Cerf is perhaps best known for being one of the "fathers of the internet" for helping developing the technology underlying how data is transferred on the global network. He spoke to Business Insider this week during the "Our People-Centered Digital Future" conference in San Jose.

Although Cerf supported the sexual harassment-related walkout, he was more critical of the protests inside the company over its work to develop artificial intelligence technology for the military as part of the latter's Project Maven. The objections raised about that effort were due to misunderstandings by employees of the work Google was doing and the benefits of working with the military, he said.

• Read more:
• An executive with Google's parent company resigns with no severance after sexual misconduct allegations come to light
• The 'father of the internet' says that Google employee backlash to its defense work was just 'a lot of misunderstanding'
• It's become increasingly clear that Alphabet, Google's parent company, needs new leadership
• Google's recent behavior shows the troubling reality of an internet superpower that abandoned its vow to not 'be evil'

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