Googlers resign on Flickr

Leading tech-blogger Amit Agarwal blogs about how Alex Rainert and Dennis Crowley, Dodgeball founders who became Google employees after the internet giant bought their baby, have quit in the most unusual style.

They advertised their resignation on Flickr (does that mean they're going to Yahoo! ;-))?)

Amit says:

The duo announced their decision to resign from Google on Flickr with thumbs-down. And they have tagged the picture on Flickr as "G00G" (that's the stock symbol for Google with Zeroes)

The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.

Another irony is that Twitter, which gets much attention than Google-owned DodgeBall, is the brainchild of an ex-Googler.

Let's do a quick recap of high-profile exits from Google:

March 2006 - Google acquires @last, developers of SketchUp. March 2007 - Sketchup co-founder quits Google. [Life as Googler : 12 months]

January 2006 - Google acquires radio ads firm DMarc. February 2007 - dMarc founders leave Google. [Life as Googlers - 13 months]

February 2003 - Google acquires Pyra Labs, developers of the Blogger platform. October 2004 - Founder Evan Williams calls it a day at Googleplex. [Life as Googler - 20 months]

Does this indicate any trend ? Not really as the founding teams of other popular Google acquisitions such as YouTube, Writely, JotSpot, Picasa, MeasureMap, Urchin and others are still enjoying life at Google.

On a related note: Jim Stroud's article on Google employees are leaving!

Heh, there are somethings that even great free lunches cannot buy after some point.

The actual issue is does the acquiring firm only want to acquire the technology and not the talent? Or is it that once an entrepreneur has been there and done that, and has been adequately compensated, he/she will hardly ever be satisfied as an employee of a corporation...even if it is Google.