In light of the recent memo that a male Google (GOOGL  ) employee sent out in the workplace that expressed derogatory and misogynistic views regarding women, a recent examination of pay rates in Google conducted by employees themselves revealed that women working for the tech behemoth are, on average, paid less than their male counterparts.

The employee-led investigation found that mainly women in the middle rung of the corporate ladder are affected by this disparity, with differing bonuses accounting for as much as around $15,000. At this level, women in Google are essentially making 6% less than men in the same position, translating to a loss of around $11,000.

The statistics are disappointing to say the least, but they represent only a small piece of a puzzle that spans the entire Silicon Valley workforce and beyond. They hint at a work cult

ure that harbors an atmosphere of injustice and political bias, both of which have recently been associated with Google for a variety of reasons.

In addition to the numerous gender equality issues Google has been facing, it has also come under fire for using its "power to crush an unfavorable story," ironically exploiting the very monopolistic sway it claims it does not have. For instance, Google's chairman Eric Schmidt recently pressured The New America Foundation's head to exclude one of its most famous scholars for criticizing Google's liberal leanings. Shortly after, not only was the scholar removed, but so was the Open Markets team he was leading.

A similar story was recently unearthed involving a Forbes writer:

In 2011, I wrote for Forbes about how Google was pushing publishers down in search results for not adding Google Plus buttons to their pages. Google promptly flipped out and pressured my bosses to take down the story, strongly implying that it would hurt Forbes' search traffic if they didn't. We unpublished the post, and soon even cached versions of it disappeared.

In 2011, I wrote for Forbes about how Google was pushing publishers down in search results for not adding Google Plus buttons to their pages. Google promptly flipped out and pressured my bosses to take down the story, strongly implying that it would hurt Forbes' search traffic if they didn't. We unpublished the post, and soon even cached versions of it disappeared.

If this wasn't enough of a PR nightmare already, last month Google unfairly removed the app Gab from its Android app store, stopped one of Vivaldi's AdWords campaigns, rendered its own features such as Google Docs incompatible with Opera and engaged in a slew of other anti-competitive practices involving other players in the tech space.

Harold Feld of Public Knowledge said: "it would be fairly straightforward" to require Google not to discriminate against brands that it has no affiliations with: "don't favor your own stuff over non-affiliated products."

All of these issues are extremely pressing because of three reasons. First, this sort of anti-competitive behavior completely suppresses innovation in budding companies, ultimately negatively affecting the consumer who loses out on potentially useful products and simultaneously also has to pay Google's own premium.

Second, from Google's perspective, this kind of negative publicity is of course going to damage its prospects with investors who won't want to be affiliated with such a controversial entity and could potentially fall into legal trouble with regulators. This is already evident from Google's dipping share price since the beginning of August.

Third, Google's policies, especially regarding women, set a precedent for the rest of Silicon Valley and America's corporate world. It is not acceptable to normalize such behavior, and if these incidents continue, Google will surely face more backlash from an array of enraged stakeholders.

Sources