[MiroF]

If your supervisor knew that you were taking the trip to vacation, why would they approve it?

If the supervisor did not know, then your analogy is flawed. There was no information asymmetry between Spiers and her reviewers - they knew what the change did and they approved it.

[zo1]

No, to follow the analogy: The supervisor trusted that person to only put in requests that are actually work-related. Just because the process says "supervisor approves" doesn't mean that it absolves the subordinate of responsibility.

So in this case process was followed, yeah. But trust was broken, and it only stands to reason that Google would fire this employee because of it. All other stuff is secondary and pollutes the discussion.