Google’s new hire
Google has broken the long-held “no poach” agreement between Google and Apple by hiring an Apple senior director of product integrity for a secret Google project, according to VentureBeat. Simon Prakash has been at Apple for over eight years, and while his LinkedIn profile still says he is at Apple, we consider this rumor to be credible.
This hire is “historic,” says VentureBeat because Google has not poached any top Apple talent, and the timing is interesting “because the Department of Justice is investigating Google and Apple for allegedly working out a “no poach” agreement where the companies — along with Pixar, Lucasfilm, Intel and Intuit — allegedly conspired to suppress employee compensation by not poaching each other’s employees.”
Prakash will be working on a secret project for Google after years being responsible for the quality of all Apple products, most likely directly reporting to Google co-founder Sergey Brin who typically heads secret research projects at the company. VentureBeat notes that Google “recently acquired Motorola Mobility, and it has a wide variety of hardware projects under way that Prakash might be working on.”
Having earned his BSME in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University and MBA in Marketing, Management Technology at the University of Colorado at Denver, Prakash went on to be a Reliability Test Engineer at StorageTek, then 3Com, and then to Cielo Communications as the Director of Engineering Design Validation, before joining Apple. Known for their quality of product at Apple, Prakash is a top catch.
If there ever was an agreement between Apple and Google not to steal talent from each other, the agreement is officially over with this new hire who is said to start at Google on Monday.
