Google Inc. has been strategic at luring key employees away from their competitors.  In this article, I will highlight some of past and present poaching as well as future speculations.  As you finish reading this, please leave a comment for this post as your opinion matters a lot to us.  Let’s start with the past:

Past:
Google hired Mark Lucovsky, a developer of the Windows NT team, in 2004.  Lucovsky claimed that after he approached the Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer about leaving the company, Ballmer threw a chair and made references about killing Google and the Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.  In response, Ballmer stated that the situation description was overexaggerated.

Dr. Kai Fu Lee, founder of Microsoft Research Asia left Microsoft in July 2005 to join Google.  Immediately after Lee announced his departure for Google, Microsoft wanted to make sure that Lee didn’t walk away so easily.  Lee was the former Corporate Vice President of the Natural Interactive Services Division at Microsoft and was to accept a position with a Google research lab in China.  Microsoft explained that “Accepting such a position with a direct Microsoft competitor like Google violates the narrow noncompetition promise Lee made when he was hired as an executive.”  Since Lee’s departure, Microsoft and Google has come to a settlement that Lee is happy with.  “According to Google, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is ‘pleased with the terms of the settlement .’”  The settlement is that Lee must refrain from “using the confidential knowledge he gained or developed while working at Microsoft, particularly as relates to search, speech recognition, and natural language processing [source].”

Vic Gundotra, a 15-year veteran and General Manager of the Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft will be joining Google in June 2007 because of a non-compete agreement with Microsoft.

Joe Beda left Microsoft in September 2004. Beda worked on Avalon, Vista (when it was codenamed Longhorn), and Internet Explorer. Now Beda works on Google Talk.

Adam Bosworth, a VP of Engineering at Google was previously a VP Engineer at BEA Systems.  Prior to Bosworth’s tenure at BEA, he was a part of Microsft’s WebData group and also previously worked at Borland.  According to Wikipedia, it is rumored that Bosworth will be a leading architect for Google Health.

Present:
Prasad Bhaarat Ram, the CTO of Yahoo! India was hired by Google and was placed in charge of Google’s R&D efforts in Bangalore, Karnataka India.  This comes at a bad time for Yahoo! because part of Yahoo!’s corporate overview includes concentrating its expansion in the Asia-Pacific.  Previous experience of Ram’s includes a CTO position with Dynamax Technology and as a General Manager of Xerox Rights Management (now known as ContentGuard).  The Xerox Rights Management project was created by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was supported by Microsoft and Time Warner.

Less than two weeks ago, Google hired one of the top developer’s of AOL’s AIM software and 10 year veteran, Justin Uberti.  Uberti announced his departure on his Tales of a Running Man Blog.  Next year, Google Talk and AIM will be collaborating on an intercommunication project.  AIM boasts a 43 million user-base whereas Google Talk has a measly 4 million.  Before Uberti left, he was working on AOL’s Open AIM initiative which included making AIM code open source.

Future:
You know how sometimes you hear about mom-and-pop retailers having to shut-down because a Wal-Mart warehouse moves into town?  One month ago, Google opened an office in my hometown city, Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Not only that, but the San Jose Mercury News announced that Google will be hiring 1,000 people within the next 5 years in Ann Arbor.  For new college graduates such as myself, this is great news!  This opens up tremendous opportunities for my friends at University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Eastern Michigan University, and other local universities and colleges.  At the new facility in Michigan, Google will concentrate on the AdWords service as well as scanning library books through the partnership with the University of Michigan for Google Print.

How are local Michigan companies responding to Google coming into town?  Michiganradio.com, the Michigan NPR station had released an article stating that advertising company, ePrize will be expanding services and will be hiring 400 more employees within the next 3 years in the Detroit office to maintain competition with Google.  ePrize took a 10 million dollar loan to do so.

It doesn’t just stop at Michigan.  Google has also revamped an old office into a brand new 300,000 square foot office in New York.  Somebody also has to manage the newly acquired YouTube Inc. as well.  There’s only so much money that Google can give to their lawyers and other media companies that are suing Google because of YouTube. 

Google’s expansion is a call for the company to poach like they have never poached before.  At this point, it is guaranteed that Google will provide an incentive for very experienced managers at major companies in Michigan, New York, and California to leave their current jobs and handle Google’s new facilities and acquired companies.  As this happens, we will be there to report it faster than a heart pulse.