It's almost a year since I wrote this article - "Money can't buy you loyalty - about the possibility of an impending exodus of staff away from Google.
The speculation was that an increasing number of Googlers were seeing their options in the company vest, and that it was going to be increasingly difficult for to hang on to some high profile staff who were now millionaires on the lookout for a challenge.
The news yesterday that another senior executive at the internet's most influential company had jumped ship - this time to record label EMI - has boosted the "brain drain" meme surface again (here's Reuters, Wired and our own Jemima on the subject).
That comes on the heels of other departures (most notably Sheryl Sandberg's switch to Facebook) .
Staff turnover is a natural phenomenon, of course, but the key thing here is trying to determine what - if anything - these changes tells us: is Google a victim of its own rapid expansion? Has its ability to retain valued staff diminished? Does it signal the rise of legitimate competitors? Or something else entirely been happening here?
