28,000-Star Hit Creator Unexpectedly Fired by Google, Silicon Valley Big Shots Quickly Vie for the Talent
A nearly 7-year Google veteran, Justin Poehnelt, was fired shortly after his open-source project 'gws' (a Google Workspace CLI built in Rust) went viral, amassing over 28,000 GitHub stars. The tool, designed for both humans and AI agents, allowed terminal access to all major Workspace services like Gmail and Drive by dynamically generating commands from Google's own APIs.
The dismissal came just two days after Google announced its "official" Workspace CLI at its Cloud Next 2026 conference, leading to widespread criticism that the company appropriated his work. Poehnelt believes the real reason was internal fear that his project demonstrated how AI agents could fundamentally disrupt and simplify interaction with Google's core Workspace products, potentially threatening its established business model.
Following his public disclosure of the events, which garnered millions of views, tech leaders like OpenClaw's Peter Steinberger and CEOs from OpenRouter and Vercel swiftly offered him jobs, highlighting the perceived misstep by Google in letting a top-performing innovator go.
marsbit06/26 00:19
