Diversity memo poses major public test for Google CEO

IN almost two years as Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai has weathered multiple storms with relative ease.

His search engine came out of the fake news brouhaha largely unscathed. He watched his employees walk out en masse over immigration restrictions ordered by President Donald Trump, lending his support without drawing heat from the White House. He avoided major fallout after scores of advertisers boycotted YouTube over offensive video content. And he's continued to post double-digit sales growth, helping to propel shares of parent company Alphabet Inc to records - even as the European Union ratchets up its antitrust scrutiny.

But a single memo is shaping up to be Mr Pichai's greatest trial yet. On Monday, Google fired the engineer behind an internal posting that decried efforts at the company to diversify its workforce. The memorandum set off an explosive debate inside Google, which has prided itself on letting employees air opinions, and beyond once it became public.