Google announced that it has fired 48 employees for sexual harassment during the past two years and sent them away without severance packages, hours after a news report that it had protected some male executives facing sexual misconduct allegations and offered them large sums to leave the company. In his email, Pichai said Google adopted tougher policies in 2015. Those rules require all of Google’s vice presidents and senior vice presidents to disclose any relationship with an employee, even if they don’t work in the same department or have any other potential conflict. In an apparent attempt to assure employees that things had changed since Rubin’s departure, Pichai said 13 of the 48 workers that Google had fired for violating the company’s sexual harassment policies were either senior managers or executives. None of those 13 received severance packages, Pichai wrote. We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace, Pichai wrote.