Google Taken Over By Religious Cult?
Something rather strange is going on at Google, the Tech giant may have been knowingly infiltrated by a religious cult.
A community in the Sierra Nevada mountain range has infiltrated into a specific Google unit. The group, called the Fellowship of Friends, resides on a 1,200-acre compound in the middle of California. More than 200 miles from the community is a separate, more religious sect that believes that the apex of consciousness can be achieved through art, literature, and culture. This ideology has attracted the group to the tech company.
Fellowship of Friends members has started working in Google’s business unit. The sector specifically works on videos about the company’s new technology in-depth. Many members also had roles like catering company events, operating the registration desk, and taking photos. Google was also affiliated with a winery that the Fellowship of Friends ran, regularly purchasing bottles from their store.
Today, a former employee named Kevin Lloyd is suing the tech company due to an unfair firing. He believes his termination at Google was due to rising concerns about Fellowship of Friends members as coworkers. Specifically, Lloyd was worried about the influence the religious group would have over the company and its employees. The lawsuit also holds Advanced Systems Group responsible, an organization that sends contractors to companies. Many of the Fellowship of Friends followers were referred to Google through the Advanced Systems Group.
Lloyd’s lawsuit, filed last August, states that Google is directly defying California legislation around discrimination. Lloyd described many incidents of authoritative figures, who were members of Fellowship of Friends, acting heinously or inappropriately during work hours. The lawsuit also places blame on Advanced Systems Group for not properly vetting the Fellowship of Friends associates referred to Google. Lloyd is currently seeking compensation for wrongful termination, retaliation, and failure from Google to prevent employee discrimination. The plaintiff believes unearthing this issue could reveal the tech company’s inadvertent funding of Fellowship of Friend’s tangential religious sect.
Lloyd primarily describes issues with Peter Lubbers, a high-up at Google and member of Fellowship of Friends. He was the head of the Google Developer Studio, which Lloyd worked under. Former followers of the religious group stated that Lubbers had joined the community after moving from the Netherlands to the United States. He began working at Google in 2012 and is currently a director of the Google Developer Studio, which receives a lofty paycheck and powerful reputation.
Due to Lubbers’s influential position at the company, he was able to invite more Fellowship of Friends members to work under him at the Google Developer Studio. Employees at Google became frustrated at the hiring process in this Google unit since Lubbers could hire Fellowship of Friends members without standard reviewing or vetting of applicants. Lloyd quickly noticed that the team he was working for had a majority of Fellowship of Friends followers, making him skeptical about Lubbers’s hiring process and agenda.
When asked to comment on the situation, Lubbers denies that his religious beliefs informed his hiring practice at the tech company. His Fellowship of Friends connection has “never played a role in hiring,” he stated. He then pointed focus at the Advanced Systems Groups for referring religious members to Google in the first place.
