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Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook-Google relations
From: Jonathan Rosenberg [Google]
To: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 9:45 PM
Subject: RE: Thanks + a request re Google
I am sorry that that broader relations seem to be at Defcon 2 at the corporate level with us right now. Maybe there is a path to navigate where we agree to stay out of each other's way and do no harm?
[REDACTED]
Jr
From: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
To: Jonathan Rosenberg
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 6:53 AM
I am honestly not sure what you mean about Defcon 2 – do you mean with Google and Facebook broadly? Me? I have time scheduled with Omid this week to talk about ways we can work together so if there is an escalating argument, I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. What is going on?
And thanks for sharing this. And congratulations – what a great milestone in your lives.
From: Jonathan Rosenberg [Google]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 9:01 AM
I was referring to the broad relations between us, primarily related to employees leaving from one company and going to the other which have severely strained relations.
From: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 9:47 AM
On that, I will say the same thing I keep saying. We have many applicants from all over – including Google. I would say that our applicant pool is fairly broad and Google does not represent an inordinate amount, but there are a steady stream of people applying. We are being very strict on the Google non-solicit. If you hear of any violation of the non-solicit agreement, please let me know and we will look into it immediately.
We really want a deep relationship – or at this point any relationship – with Google and that is why I asked for time with Omid this week as we have specific ideas of how we could work together. So far, Mark's experience predating me and the experience to date has suggested these feelings are not reciprocated. I am hoping this will change.
From: Jonathan Rosenberg [Google]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 10:13 AM
My personal opinion is that I think you are putting too much weight in your view of the notion of "not soliciting" as though soliciting in itself is the only thing that upsets people. Rather, it is the outcome of people going from one company to the other which is problematic. If the outcome were not occurring at scale, independent of the mechanism by which people move, that would serve as an opportunity to build on better relations. I don't think people look at each individual case and ask, "how did this happen and did folks play according to the rules". I think people just look at the overall report and say x people went from one place to another and that's bad.
From: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 10:54 AM
And what is your view of google's hiring?
From: Jonathan Rosenberg [Google]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 11:26 AM
My view is we would be better off if NEITHER of us did it. If you all are, I sure as hell will try likewise!
From: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 12:18 PM
That is not what I meant at all. What I meant is that google grew by hiring from other firms in our industry - even when they minded and people like meg called eric - as we believed in a free labor market.
We are not specifically trying to hire from goolge. To the contrary, on the margin, we hire less not more from google as we want our hiring to be broad based. We hire mostly from school directly and we want to continue that. On experienced hires, we want varied experience.
From: Jonathan Rosenberg [Google]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 12:47 PM
It is my perception that the rate of you all hiring our people has gone up and not down over the last several months. I don’t have the data committed to memory, but there is the strong perception that losing people to you is currently a problem for us and one that is has getting worse and not better.
I am making a very simple observation on what I think it takes to develop a better and deeper relationship between us since you said you say you want that and l do too.
Fix this problem. Propose that you will substantially lower the rate at which you hire people from us. Then make sure that happens. As the rate goes down, I would expect the relationship to deepen.
From: Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook]
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 1:10 PM
I think what really happens is that companies who have relationships agree in limited ways not to solcit from each other. To my knowledge, google has never agreed not to hire from any company. Google did agree not to solicit from intel, apple and maybe a few others due to board relationships but never not to hire. If that is not true, I did not know of our not-hire policy or it was only establsihed 5 months ago.
On the flip side, the way the palo alto real estate issue was handled - we had a deal for that building until google realized it was us and pulled it as well as the friend connect stuff has made the relationship hard on our side. Mark's original interaction with google on open social also did not build trust.
We really do want to work together along all of these lines if we can.
Have to get off email for rest of day. I will be thinking of you next weekend - really exciting!
[This document is from In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (2011).]
Previously: Sergey Brin: “The Facebook phenomenon creates a real retention problem” (October 13, 2007)
Previously: Sergey Brin: "Irate call from Steve Jobs" (February 13, 2005)
Amazon meeting invite
March 5, 2021
[This document is from the House Judiciary Committee (2024).]
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I was so happy to be a part of the lawsuit against these horrifying people