The relationship had previously been revealed in a 2018 report in the New York Times of sexual misconduct allegations against another Google executive, Android CEO Andy Rubin, who allegedly received a $90 million severance package when he left the company in 2014. But Blakely`s report reveals new details about his time at the company and his contact with Drummond after their relationship ended. David Drummond, general counsel of Google`s parent company, Alphabet, has engaged in numerous office romances, according to a former subordinate who recounted her own extramarital affair with Silicon Valley`s top lawyer in a blog post Thursday. „It`s no secret that Jennifer and I had a difficult breakup 10 years ago,“ Drummond said in a statement obtained by BuzzFeed. He was referring to Jennifer Blakely, a former Google legal employee who posted her account on Medium. „I`m far from perfect, and I regret being a part of it.“ Google`s corporate culture — and its seemingly lax policies regarding labor relations and potential abuses of power — is under renewed scrutiny after a former employee released an intimate report on her alleged affair with the company`s general counsel, David Drummond. Drummond, Blakely writes, moved in with her and her son for a while, but abruptly ended their relationship in October 2008 and began an affair with another Google employee. The years that followed, Blakely said, were consumed by a custody battle, with Drummond communicating with her and her child „only on his own terms.“ In 2008, another Googler told Blakely that Drummond had left a party with two female subordinates from the legal department — and taken them to San Francisco. Drummond is one of several current and former Google executives who have reportedly had relationships with employees or extramarital affairs, including Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Andy Rubin. Blakely claims that Drummond had another relationship with a subordinate after their relationship ended, which is contrary to Google`s employment policy. He is still employed by Google and earned more than $47 million last year.
Drummond, who only began divorce proceedings in 2017, then had an affair with his „personal assistant“ as well as one of them, with whom he left the party in 2008, Blakely said. After that, Blakely writes, Drummond began an affair with one of these women and another with a personal assistant. But the idea that cross-office issues at Google were acceptable behavior came from above, Blakely says: She claims Drummond first refused to see her son or pay child support, then fought her in a custody battle. Although she says they eventually reached an agreement and he began paying child support, she writes that „months or years“ went by without him seeing her son. In 2014, Drummond allegedly showed him an article about Eric Schmidt`s history of extramarital affairs during an argument, implying that the position of the executive branch granted him impunity. Jennifer Blakely, who wrote about the affair with her married boss on the blog website Medium, portrayed Drummond as a serial womanizer who openly flouted company rules against dating subordinates. When the affair began, Drummond was married, Blakely says. He was also „aware that our relationship violates Google`s new policy, which ranged from `discouraging` direct reporting relationships to outright banning,“ Blakely writes. After the birth of his son, Google`s human resources department told Drummond and Blakely that one of them had to leave the legal department. Blakely got into sales, although she has no sales experience. She eventually left Google after Drummond „offered to help us financially on a monthly basis,“ she writes.
Google`s chief legal officer, David Drummond, publicly admitted Thursday to an affair with a former colleague, but said he would not engage in a public back-and-forth after the release of a damning report on their extramarital affair the day before. Blakely said Drummond was married at the beginning of their affair, but was „separated“ from his wife, and suggested they have a child together. According to her account, she first became pregnant with her child in 2005, but then suffered a miscarriage before becoming pregnant again and giving birth to her son in 2007. Although Google`s policies did not allow managers to have personal relationships with employees who reported directly to them, Blakely claimed that Drummond never informed the people he worked for of their relationship. But „after our son was born, I got a call from human resources telling me that one of us should leave the legal department where David was now general counsel“; she was then transferred to the sales department, although she had no experience, and left Google in 2008. Blakely then moved to Google`s sales department, despite a „zero sales experience.“ A former member of Google`s legal team, who says she had a child with the company`s general counsel, David Drummond, wrote a damning blog post about how their relationship developed within the search engine giant, including „horrific threats“ to take custody of her child after initially refusing to take care of her child after initially refusing to Benefit Family. Blakely also claimed that Drummond began an affair with a personal assistant, who she said had moved into one of her homes and had an affair with another Googler.