Would he have been fired if he had instead expressed these views to his manager in a room with closed door?
I'm not aware of any executives of large institutions that are perfectly happy with leaks. They just usually aren't dumb enough to pretend that a rant like this wouldn't get leaked.
You have a vastly different definition of rant than I do, aside from that why do you believe this should only be discussed behind closed doors, that is infact one of the points the author was attempting to explorer the idea that with in google anyone that did not have left political leaning felt they were not allowed to express those positions with in the company.
I'm not aware of any executives of large institutions that are perfectly happy with leaks. They just usually aren't dumb enough to pretend that a rant like this wouldn't get leaked.