Actually I think you have it backwards. By not firing him, they would have done too little to distance the Google brand from the manifesto (and worse, people's

Actually I think you have it backwards. By not firing him, they would have done too little to distance the Google brand from the manifesto (and worse, people's third and fourth hand readings of the manifesto). That would cost them more potential and current engineers short term and certainly devalue the consumer brand more than sending a message that company wide memos like that aren't tolerated. They can't just take this sitting down.