Over the past few weeks, there's been no shortage of sexual harassment/misconduct allegations. After the news regarding Harvey Weinstein broke out, reports against Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Al Franken, and many others were soon to follow.
Now, according to a report from The Information, Andy Rubin was involved in an "inappropriate relationship" during his time at Google.
The Information claims that the relationship took place with a woman that reported directly to Rubin in Google's Android division. Relationships within Google are permitted, but in the case of Rubin and the anonymous woman, it needed to be disclosed to the company so that one of them could be transferred to a different department or division. In this particular case, that never happened.
We don't know the exact details of the relationship in question, but it's reported that the woman filed a complaint with Google's HR department at one point during it. Shortly after this, Rubin left Google in 2014.
Following The Information's article, Andy Rubin's official spokesperson, Mike Sitrick, said –
Any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual. Mr. Rubin was never told by Google that he engaged in any misconduct while at Google and he did not, either while at Google or since.
Here's where things get interesting.
After this news broke, Andy Rubin announced that he would be taking a leave of absence from Essential – his latest startup that just launched its first product, the Essential Phone, earlier this year. It's unclear how long Rubin will be absent from Essential or why he chose to leave in the first place if these allegations are supposedly false, but that's where we're at for the time being.
Essential's already had a rocky first few months, and with Andy Rubin now gone for an undisclosed amount of time, its future remains uncertain.
