A series of anti-Google outdoor ads have popped up in Los Angeles near the Google office in Venice.
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Someone is plastering anti-Google ads outside Google's office criticizing CEO Sundar Pichai (GOOG, GOOGL)
Right across the street from Google's office, according to witnesses.
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The ads appear to be related to the saga of James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired earlier this week after writing a 3,000-word essay criticizing Google's diversity policies in which he suggested that biological differences in women could make them less suited to work at Google.
He distributed the "memo" widely inside the company.
One ad reads "Goolag," a play on words referring to gulags, the Soviet forced-labor camps from the 20th century.
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Damore wore a "Goolag" shirt in his headshot taken by a photographer known for photographing other fringe conservative figures, including Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulous.
Other ads are criticizing Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who fired Damore in a company email made available to the public. A New York Times columnist called for Pichai to be fired on Friday.
Some of the ads seem to imply that Apple would not have fired James Damore, or its late CEO, Steve Jobs, would have been sympathetic to Damore's arguments. Although the ads use the Apple logo and its famous slogan "Think Different," they're not Apple ads and Apple was not involved.
Since his firing, Damore has embraced alt-right personalities and other figures in fringe conservative media, many of whom have performed similar attention-grabbing stunts.
We don't know who is behind these ads yet, whether they're connected to Damore, but we know they're not official ads placed by Outfront, which handle the legitimate ads shown in those locations.
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"These are fake and we are dealing with the situation," an Outfront representative told Business Insider.
Google didn't immediately return requests for more information.
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