Nov 02

Google: You too could win millions in stock

By jason IT News World 1 Comment »

Google is once again dangling incentives before engineers.

Google’s Chrome browser earned its developers millions in stock bonuses.

The company threw open its doors Monday to the engineering community Monday, announcing that it granted a Founders’ Prize–"a multimillion-dollar stock bonus"–to the team that developed Google Chrome. "(The) future is shaped by small teams of creative people who want to make a difference. We’re on the hunt for these kind of people — let us know if you think you’re one of them," wrote Alan Eustace, senior vice president for engineering and research at Google.

Google is still one of Silicon Valley’s most generous companies in terms of employee perks, but Google’s hiring slowed over the past year as the recession took hold and the company scaled back some of those famous extras. Google even was forced to cut employees in March, and has also suffered as a number of high-profile employees decided to seek (or expand) their fortunes elsewhere.

But CEO Eric Schmidt is ready to let the good times roll once again, announcing earlier in the year that Google was set to expand hiring and acquisitions, and backing up that confidence on Google’s most recent earnings conference call.

Google also announced that Chrome now has 30 million active users. The browser trails market leaders Internet Explorer and Firefox by a wide margin, but it’s growing faster than the competition.

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Aug 09

Apple, Google agreed not to poach each other’s workers

By jason IT News World No Comments »

Apple and Google are said to have had an unofficial agreement not to poach each other’s employees–or at least they did while Google CEO Eric Schmidt served on Apple’s board, according to TechCrunch.

Unnamed sources told TechCrunch that no formal, written agreement exists, and that employees of one company were welcome to apply for jobs at the other, but that the two companies said they would not actively pursue hiring away each other’s workers.

It is unclear whether any such agreement would still be in effect now that Eric Schmidt has stepped down from Apple’s board of directors.

Such an agreement could stifle competition among companies that rely heavily on top-notch engineering talent. The Washington Post reported in June that the Justice Department had launched an industrywide investigation into whether companies, including Apple and Google, had violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruitment and hiring of each other’s workers.

Tech companies have waged fierce battles to keep top talent in their ranks. In one closely watched case, Microsoft sued Google in 2005 after it hired Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft. The two parties eventually settled out of court. In May, IBM filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent its former head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, from joining Dell, saying it would be a violation of his contract. And last year, the company sued Mark Papermaster to keep him from joining Apple. IBM and Papermaster settled a few months later, and Papermaster eventually did start working at Apple.

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