Steve jobs would have fired an Apple employee for staring at him for too long in the elevator and the press would have written fawning articles about how decisive Steve is, how secretive Apple is, and how much Apple employees fear Steve.

Take any other industry: A friend of mine working for a management consulting firm was fired for losing a presentation and making a partner look bad because the company supplied laptop had a hard disk crash. People have been fired for less.

But Sundar Pichai should take personal responsibility for firing an employee who wrote a jackass memo and caused Google PR harm. If the fellow was not fired, we'd have more articles calling for Sundar Pichai's resignation for making Google a hostile place for women and adding to gender imbalance in the industry. There's no winning strategy here.

Now, if someone is calling for Google CEO's resignation for killing reader, I wholeheartedly agree :-)

Edit: A CEO's job and responsibilities are to his/her shareholders, users and employees. Not to make decisions consistent with their personality traits.