Google's Chrome lead Pichai stays despite Twitter

Internal slips today revealed that Google's Chrome OS product management VP Sundar Pichai is staying onboard despite a poaching attempt by Twitter. The search engine reportedly paid an unspecified but "significant increase" to Pichai to keep him. Google declined to comment on the AllThingsD assertions.

Google has faced sudden and mounting pressure in the past year as other companies have been either recruiting or trying to recruit some of its senior staff. The company has in some cases paid even engineers millions of dollars to stop them from going to Facebook or other rivals.

Pichai is known to be particularly vital to Google's efforts. As the leader of both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS teams, his loss would have derailed both its browser efforts and its fledgling attempt at a desktop OS. The latter, web app based platform has already been delayed by a year to mid-2011 or later and could have been set back further with a leadership change. Gmail's creator Paul Buchheit has already posited that Google might have to quietly end Chrome OS and roll its technology into Android if it doesn't take off.

Twitter had been hoping for a new product VP of its own that would help it expand. The microblogging tool has spent much of its recent time simply hoping to sustain its exiting traffic and only little expanding its features or profitability.

By Electronista Staff