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Sounds like an excuse to me. At least I don't see what online criticism has to do with having a town-hall, by moving the discussion in-person it prevents online sniping, no?

Edit: All that said, probably a smart move by google. Their is clearly a very strong divide in our culture right now and they probably made a PR mistake by letting themselves get caught in the middle of the issue once already.

Not only a strong divide, but one that's very emotional for a lot of people, where progress and civil discourse are especially challenging.

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The OP doesn't refer to "online criticism". The second sentence of the lede refers to "online harassment":

> Google CEO Sundar Pichai has canceled the company’s much anticipated meeting to talk about gender issues today. The move came after some of its employees expressed concern over online harassment they had begun to receive after their questions and names have been published outside the company on a variety of largely alt-right sites.

The OP cites the letter as claiming that "our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally":

> We had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally. Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be “outed” publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall.

Dory is Google's Q&A software [0]. It's possible, and likely, that the Googler's who have written in "concerned about their safety" have asked that their questions be withdrawn, which reduces the efficacy of the town hall's Q&A format.

[0] http://searchengineland.com/google-moderator-aka-dory-launch...

So... let's be reasonable here. If our goal is to protect those individuals, wouldn't you simply use those questions anonymously...?

I haven't used "Dory" but am assuming that yes, questions could be read without referring to their author. I interpreted from the OP's wording that screenshots/snapshots of Dory were leaked, and these leaks would have contained names attached to questions. The Google CEO doesn't elaborate, but maybe the Googlers who expressed concerns to him were afraid that when the questions were made public, doxxers would make public the identities of the questioners?

So sure, maybe the internal Dory system should have been configured for anonymity. Come to think of it, Google should have just used its own Forms, which allows respondents to authenticate via email address, and for responses to be stored into a private, management-only spreadsheet. I think it's safe to say Google has handled many aspects of its response to Damore in a sub-optimal way.

Few thing spook executives more than having to answer anonymous questions in front of the whole company!