Long before Apple and Google became fierce rivals in the smartphone era, an exchange between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt revealed how seriously Silicon Valley leaders viewed the battle for engineering talent.
Court documents later made public lic showed jobs personally asked Google to stop recruiting Apple employees, prompting swift action from Google’s leadership, according to a report by Reuters. The emails that surfaced during the civil litigation involving Apple, Google and several other technology companies accused of conspiring to suppress employee compensation by limiting competition for skilled workers.
Because he did not want to create a paper trail he could be sued over later, when Google’s HR director asked whether the no-recruiting policy could be shared with others, Schmidt said he preferred it be shared verbally.
Jobs told Palm’s then-CEO Edward Colligan that if Palm kept targeting Apple employees, Apple would launch a patent lawsuit. Google co-founder Sergey Brin testified that Jobs had told him hiring one of Apple’s people would mean “war,” a reference to patent litigation. Shown the smiley email in his deposition, Brin reportedly said, “Wow, Steve used a smiley.
Other emails showed Jobs threatening rivals. Schmidt also seemed aware of the legal risk.