Apparently Google just breach the cease fire agreement that the company has with the sworn enemy Apple, when it comes to stealing each other’s employees. As Simon Prakash, one of Apple veterans, admitted on his LinkedIn profile, he was hired away by Google. Simon Prakash worked for Cupertino based company for more than eight years, and during this time he covered various aspects of product quality for all Apple devices, from iPhones to Macs as Senior Director of Product Integrity.
After resigning this position, Simon Prakash was recruited bu Google to work on a top secret task, presumably led by Google co-founder Sergei Brin. When it comes to secret Google projects, Sergei Brin seem to hold a lot of secrets as he is involved in the most sensitive projects, including the ones developed in the mysterious X Lab.
The move is quite intriguing, considering the agreements Google and Apple, among other tech giants have on not pursuing each other’s employees. Apple had a serious problem on this matter and lost many valuable employees to Google in 2007, until the late Steve Jobs wrote a letter to Google chairman Eric Schmidt and complained about the lack of ethics of the situation.
“I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this,” he said at the time and Eric Schmidt agreed to stop this course of action. Later, the Department of Justice is found out about this unwritten agreements and started an investigation against Google, Apple but also Pixar, Lucasfilm, Intel and Intuit. The result was that the tech companies were strongly advised to stop conspiring against their own employees.
