Google fired the engineer behind a viral Workspace CLI — then shipped its own

Justin Poehnelt says Google terminated him roughly two months ago over an unofficial Google Workspace command-line tool he built, which briefly went viral: it topped Hacker News, drew thousands of GitHub stars, and picked up thousands of real users within days. The attention cut both ways — some directors reportedly wanted to learn from the project, while legal pressed him over the use of Google’s logo and brand colors in the public GitHub repository.

Poehnelt attributes the firing less to the CLI itself than to anxiety inside Workspace about what AI agents could mean for the product, and a broader reluctance among certain leaders to be disrupted. The sharpest detail is the timing: two days before his termination, Google used Cloud Next to announce that an official Workspace CLI was on the way.

A nearly seven-year Google veteran, Poehnelt framed the public account as a way to own his story and process the experience, crediting supportive teammates and a manager. The episode is a notable data point on how large companies handle employee-driven, agent-adjacent tooling that outpaces official roadmaps and brand controls.