Yesterday saw another senior Googler depart to take on a new challenge at the darling of the social media world, Facebook. From vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, Elliot Schrage, has been put in charge of communications, government relations and corporate marketing for Facebook. With this, Google's third high level departure of the year so far and the second to Facebook, there are murmurs that there is a brain drain occurring at the search giant's core. Before 2008, only three senior executives had left their posts, one of whom remains at the company as his successor has yet to be found. The official Google response references their "deep management bench", but just how deep does it go and what if this departure rate remains, or worse, what if it increases?
While many will discard the brain drain theory straight off, the other half of this story must also be considered. Facebook is now seen by some (VentureBeat, Forbes, USA Today & John McCrea to name but a few) as the hottest company in Silicon Valley, a title until recently reserved exclusively for the search engine from Mountain View. This shift is bolstered by the recent international increase in social network usage and the inevitable talk of money making potential, but only time will tell if this moniker sticks.
Maybe the grass is greener in Palo Alto, maybe Google is too comfortable with it's dominance of search and internet advertising, no one can say for sure. What is clear is that despite the rumours of social networking sites losing momentum and impending implosion in the sector, they are still able to attract the big guns of the internet business age to their ranks. This is however, unlikely to seriously affect Google in the long run with its market value continuing to grow as its market share does.
But it would surely be foolish to discount Facebook's potential to wrest the title from Google in the future. Another recent high level hiring was Gideon Yu, formerly YouTube's chief financial officer, and subsequent Google-to-Facebook transfers from Ethan Beard and Benjamin Ling. All that can be said for now is that social networking is an area of great potential in internet usage and advertising, a fact not lost on Zuckerberg and co.
