“Google has lost another employee to Facebook: Eliot Schrage, the company’s VP of global communications and public affairs.”
More high-level assistance comes to Mark Zuckerberg: He is getting a new PR boss from Google — This time it is “Elliot Schrage,” who heads global communications and public affairs at the search king — and a new board member — Marc Andreessen, from the origins of the Web.
“The Google talent train keeps this tips pulling into Facebook.”
Whenever a Google executive leaves, the company says that it is not facing a brain drain and that it has deep bench of talent. That is certainly true — many people still ambitiously wants to work at Google than want to leave.
Nevertheless it is also true that the continuous exodus in the top ranks appears to be accelerating. And every time a prominent executive, engineer or marketer leaves, it raises anew questions about Google’s ability to keep its best and brightest.
The latest departure is Schrage, who is jumping on to Facebook bandwagon starting May 14, where he will be in charge of communications, government relations and corporate marketing.
He follows in the footsteps of several other former Googlers at Facebook, including Sheryl Sandberg, who left her position as Google’s VP of global online sales and operations in March to become Facebook’s new COO.
In a message sent to employees from India, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg credited Schrage for broadening Google’s public image and said he expects him to do the same for Facebook. “This is a really important role for us and one that we have been trying to find the right person for a while,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”
Google’s official response to Schrage’s exit on Tuesday had a familiar ring. “Elliot was a valued member of the Google team and we wish him well in his new endeavors,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “We have a deep management bench at Google.”
“Google stated that Schrage will be substituted by Rachel Whetstone, who ran the company’s communications team in Europe.”
Since past few months, Facebook has hired many Google executives as it prepares to expand abroad and double its workforce to 1,000 by the end of the year. Apart from Schrage, the Palo Alto, Calif., social network, in March, hired Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s head of ad sales, as its chief operating officer and No. 2 executive to Zuckerberg.
As Facebook, may well be an acquisition target for Microsoft which is expecting to replace the one that got away. Steve Ballmer has previously shown keen interest towards Facebook as one of the companies that can help him achieve the audience scale that Yahoo would have provided.
And if Zuck refutes that advances, he will have another big decision coming within the next year or so: Who is going to be CEO when Facebook files its IPO in 2009 or 2010?
“In addition to the unavoidable questions about brain drain at Google, of course, there is the Facebook question.”
Indeed, many people believe that Facebook is Silicon Valley’s hot company du jour, usurping Google for the moment, and industry watchers expect more employees at the Mountain View, Calif., Internet Company to head over to the social network.
But the growing Google-to-Facebook pipeline suggests there is something to that idea. Before Sandberg and Schrage, Facebook hired YouTube’s chief financial officer, Gideon Yu, in 2007. More lately, it poached two other senior Googlers: Ethan Beard, to run business development, and Benjamin Ling, to be director of product platform marketing. Lower-level employees have also made the move from Mountain View to Palo Alto.
Why has Google lost its luster? For one thing, it has matured so big, so speedily — that it now has 16,800 workers worldwide — that it is getting harder for employees to a make a mark. And Google’s stock options package is not as attractive now that the stock is trading close to $600.
After departing the Internet search giant last year, engineer Justin Rosenstein sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues, describing his new employer, Facebook, as “the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly brilliant people congregate and feed off each other’s genius. That company that is doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can not pull off.”
Facebook is also on the lookout for a new general counsel. Since it likes Google execs, one wonders if David Drummond, the Internet king’s high-profile chief legal officer, is in the running.