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In 2015, Mayer and Yahoo General Counsel approved a classified government order under FISA Section 702 to build custom software scanning millions of Yahoo Mail accounts in real-time for the NSA/FBI. Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos resigned in June 2015 when he discovered the program, initially believing it was a hack. Mayer stated publicly that revealing such programs would be 'treason' and executives 'could go to prison.'

Beginning in 2015, Salesforce conducted annual company-wide pay audits and spent over $12 million adjusting salaries to close gender and racial pay gaps. CEO Marc Benioff championed the initiative after being challenged by Chief People Officer Cindy Robbins. Salesforce was among the first major tech companies to publish annual equal pay updates and commit to ongoing audits. By 2022, the company reported achieving statistical pay parity across gender and race.

Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, filed a $16 million gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit in May 2012 naming the firm and several senior partners individually, including John Doerr. The suit alleged Doerr and other senior partners ignored her complaints about sexual harassment by a colleague and that Doerr told her a board seat she deserved was given to a male partner because he 'needed a win.' At the March 2015 trial, Doerr testified he was a strong advocate for Pao, but opposing counsel showed he had publicly denied the allegations on Kleiner's blog before reading the independent investigator's report, and evidence suggested he had shifted from backing Pao to endorsing her termination. The firm and named partners won the case, but multiple outlets described Doerr's personal reputation as damaged by the trial.

After Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations that the NSA had been intercepting Cisco networking equipment in transit to implant surveillance backdoors, Cisco took countermeasures by shipping products to seemingly random addresses to throw off interception efforts. CEO John Chambers also wrote to President Obama protesting the NSA's practices. Cisco published a formal human rights position opposing backdoors and stating it does not deliberately build backdoors into its products.

On February 24, 2015, YouTube launched the YouTube Kids app for Android and iOS, designed specifically for children ages 4-12. The app featured algorithmic and human-curated content filtering for child-friendliness, parental controls including screen time limits, search restriction, and channel blocking, plus age-based content categories. While initially criticized for some advertising concerns and content filtering gaps, it represented a proactive investment in child-safe platform design and COPPA compliance.

In February 2015, unauthorized individuals gained access to Slack infrastructure including a database storing user profile information: usernames, email addresses, hashed passwords, phone numbers, and Skype IDs. Approximately 500,000 users were affected. In response, Slack added two-factor authentication. In 2019, Slack reset passwords for ~1% of users still using pre-2015 credentials.

Theranos operated blood testing services in Walgreens stores in California and Arizona despite knowing its technology could not consistently produce accurate results for tests including calcium, potassium, HIV, and sodium. The company falsely advertised cheaper and faster blood tests. Walgreens terminated the partnership in June 2016 and sued for breach of contract. Patients received inaccurate medical test results that could have led to harmful treatment decisions.

Starting in 2015, Nadella led a culture transformation at Microsoft, eliminating the divisive stack ranking system and fostering a growth mindset culture. Internal surveys showed a 30% increase in employee satisfaction from 2014 to 2022, with employees reporting higher empowerment and better alignment. The transformation is widely credited with revitalizing Microsoft's innovation and collaboration.

Van Rossum consistently advocated for diversity in the Python community and broader tech industry. He described himself as 'born feminist' citing his mother's influence, and actively mentored women engineers at Dropbox. He publicly spoke about the lack of women in Python core development and worked to make the community more inclusive.

KiOR, a biofuel company in which Khosla Ventures held 75% of voting shares and invested nearly $160 million, filed for bankruptcy in November 2014 after generating only $2.3 million in revenue against $629 million in losses. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood called it 'one of the largest frauds ever perpetrated on the State of Mississippi' and sued Khosla for $77 million repayment of state loans. The SEC fined the successor company $100,000 for misleading investors about biocrude yields. Shareholders received a $4.5 million settlement.

Uber employees used internal 'God View' tool to track riders and celebrities without consent from 2014-2016. Tool showed location of Uber vehicles and customers who requested cars and was widely available to corporate employees. Employees used it to spy on ex-girlfriends, track politicians and celebrities including Beyoncé. In November 2014, Uber's New York General Manager Josh Mohrer tracked BuzzFeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan to greet her at arrival. In 2011 incident, attendee at Uber Chicago launch party tracked venture capitalist Peter Sims' movements displayed on large public screen. Senator Al Franken expressed concerns in November 2014. Uber settled with New York Attorney General for $20,000 fine in January 2016 and with FTC in August 2017, agreeing to 20 years of privacy audits.

In October 2014, Tim Cook published an essay in Bloomberg Businessweek publicly coming out as gay, becoming the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He stated he hoped it would help LGBTQ+ youth struggling with their identity. Cook has since been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, urging states like Alabama to advance equality laws.

At the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Nadella advised women to trust the system rather than ask for raises, saying it was 'good karma.' He apologized hours later, calling his answer 'completely wrong' and affirming support for equal pay.

GitHub's Student Developer Pack and Global Campus programs provide students worldwide free access to GitHub Pro tier, Copilot and tens of partner developer tools (DigitalOcean credits, JetBrains IDEs, Namecheap domains, etc.) regardless of geography or institution wealth. As of 2024 the program had distributed estimated $300M+ in tooling value to more than 4 million students, including in countries where local payment access for developer subscriptions is difficult.

Theranos systematically retaliated against employees who raised concerns about test accuracy and safety. Tyler Shultz, a research engineer who discovered significant quality control failures including 20% false-positive syphilis test rates, faced years of legal threats, private investigator surveillance, and pressure to sign affidavits and identify other whistleblowers after reporting concerns to CEO Holmes and being rebuffed. He incurred $500,000 in legal fees. Co-whistleblower Erika Cheung faced similar treatment. The company employed aggressive tactics including surveillance, legal threats, and NDAs to silence employees. A microbiologist was fired for pushing for required environmental health and safety protections. The toxic culture created an environment where unquestioning loyalty to Holmes superseded scientific integrity and ethical considerations.

On June 13, 2014, Elon Musk announced in 'All Our Patent Are Belong To You' that Tesla would not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone using their technology 'in good faith.' The pledge applied to key EV technologies including advanced battery systems, thermal management solutions, and powertrain designs. Musk stated Tesla's 'true competition was not the small trickle of non-Tesla cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world's factories everyday.' He explained 'patents serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors.'

In June 2014, Peter Thiel awarded a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship (paid over two years) to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. The Thiel Fellowship, announced in 2010, provides funding to young entrepreneurs to skip college and pursue innovative projects. Buterin used this support to develop Ethereum, which became the second-largest cryptocurrency and a foundational platform for decentralized applications and smart contracts. Ethereum is open-source technology.

In 2014, Cloudflare launched Project Galileo, providing free enterprise-level cybersecurity services to at-risk public interest organizations including human rights groups, journalists, and civil society organizations. By 2025, the project protected over 3,000 internet properties in 120+ countries, blocking 108.9 billion cyber threats in a single year. Cloudflare partners with 56 civil society organizations to identify groups needing protection.

In May 2014, emails sent by Evan Spiegel during his time at Stanford fraternity were leaked to Gawker. The emails included misogynistic and homophobic comments and openly encouraged getting women heavily drunk in an attempt to convince them to have sex. Spiegel issued an apology stating 'I'm obviously mortified and embarrassed that my idiotic emails during my fraternity days were made public. I have no excuse. I'm sorry I wrote them at the time and I was a jerk to have written them.'

In March 2014, Brendan Eich was appointed CEO of Mozilla. Within days, backlash erupted over his 2008 donation of $1,000 to support California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. After dating site OkCupid urged users to boycott Firefox, Eich resigned on April 3, 2014. Mozilla's board stated it 'failed to act on clear signals' that the appointment would cause controversy.

Appointed Mozilla CEO on March 24, 2014, Eich faced immediate backlash from employees and the public over his 2008 Proposition 8 donation. Half of Mozilla's board stepped down, OkCupid urged users to boycott Firefox, and CREDO Mobile collected 50,000+ signatures demanding his resignation. Eich expressed 'sorrow for causing pain' but resigned April 3, 2014, stating he 'cannot be an effective leader' under the circumstances. Mozilla confirmed he was not fired.

Kingston's V300 SSD shipped to reviewers with Toshiba 19nm Toggle-Mode 2.0 NAND (200 MB/s interface) but retail units were silently switched to Micron 20nm asynchronous NAND (~50 MB/s interface), resulting in up to 300 MB/s performance degradation. Kingston acknowledged the switch in March 2014, admitted not renaming to V305 was a bad decision, but defended the practice as maintaining 'flexibility to source NAND.' Community boycott ensued.

Since before becoming CEO, Nadella served as executive sponsor for Microsoft's disability community group. Under his leadership, Microsoft launched the Autism Hiring Program, Supported Employment Program, Seeing AI app for visually impaired users, and Learning Tools for dyslexia. His personal experience raising a son with cerebral palsy drove systemic accessibility initiatives across Microsoft products.

When Satya Nadella took the helm as Microsoft's CEO in 2014, he made accessibility a core pillar of Microsoft's mission, driven by his personal connection to disability. His oldest son Zain was born in 1996 with severe cerebral palsy from in-utero asphyxiation. Nadella credits his wife with teaching him empathy, stating 'when I infuse empathy into my every day actions it is powerful.' Before becoming CEO, he was executive sponsor for Microsoft's disabled staff community group and has spoken at five of the last seven annual Ability Summits. He integrated 'empower every person in every organization' into Microsoft's mission statement.

From 2014 when LinkedIn launched in China, the platform complied with Beijing's censorship directives, blocking content related to Tiananmen, politically sensitive topics, and profiles of journalists and academics. According to LinkedIn's 2022 transparency report, the company complied with 42 of 43 Chinese government content removal requests in 2021. LinkedIn also blocked international users' profiles from being visible in China, creating a two-tiered system. After Congressional criticism in October 2021, LinkedIn announced it would shut down its full China service, replacing it with a jobs-only app (InJobs/InCareer) which itself was shut down in August 2023.

Evan You created Vue.js in 2014, which grew to become one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks. In 2016, he became one of the first developers to sustain full-time open source work through Patreon and later GitHub Sponsors, pioneering a model for independent open source sustainability. All his projects (Vue, Vite, Vitest) are MIT licensed.

ByteDance established an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee in 2014. Vice President Zhang Fuping serves as the company's CCP Committee Secretary. According to a report submitted to the Australian Parliament, Zhang stated that ByteDance should 'transmit the correct political direction, public opinion guidance and value orientation into every business and product line.' In 2018, founder Zhang Yiming publicly apologized after China shut down ByteDance's app Neihan Duanzi, stating the app was 'incommensurate with socialist core values.'

Graham made statements that drew criticism including asking 'What would you do to get 13-year-old girls interested in computers?' when questioned about low rates of female YC founders, and stating that founders with 'strong foreign accents' are less successful. He later walked back some comments.

Palantir signed its first contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build the Investigative Case Management (ICM) system, a comprehensive database for tracking immigrants. This began Palantir's long relationship with immigration enforcement that would total over $250 million in contracts.

Reid Hoffman visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island, Little St. James, in 2014 and met with Epstein at MIT's campus in 2013 - after Epstein had become a registered sex offender. The relationship began through MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito for fundraising purposes. In September 2019, after the scandal erupted publicly, Hoffman apologized: 'By agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.' In November 2025, President Trump ordered an investigation into Democrats mentioned in newly released Epstein files, including Hoffman.