The cost of firing Damore was much, much higher than that. It sent a message to the entire world that Google is staffed by extremists who systematically cannot

The cost of firing Damore was much, much higher than that. It sent a message to the entire world that Google is staffed by extremists who systematically cannot be trusted to provide unbiased services or search results for anything involving women or feminism. It caught the attention of conservative politicians. It killed dead the idea that Google is run by logical, data driven people (as Damore's memo was basically a big pile of data and studies), and judging from what my friends who still work there think, it created huge cynicism in the developer workforce too. It very much did not "appease the devs" unless you are naive enough to believe that Damore is some outlier in disliking diversity programmes in tech firms.