Google may have reached an agreement with the German network administrator who tried to strong-arm the company into giving him a job. Or maybe not.

Earlier this week, the Mountain View-obsessed online rag Google Blogoscoped (http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-30-n60.html) reported that 27-year-old Sebastian Klein was using some good old-fashioned cyber-squatting in his attempt to land an IT post at the world's largest search engine.

After registering several Googlicious urls - including adwordsgoogle.de, docsgoogle.de, gdrivegoogle.com, and labsgoogle.de - Klein posted an open letter to the company, saying that he would relinquish the addresses if he got a job offer in return.

"Hi Google," he said, with the semi-English version of his rather unorthodox job application. "I would not like to keep these domains, earn also no money with it. I return it to you immediately free of charge. All I seek for is a job at Google."

His salary requirements were negotiable. "I would like to perform a lot and also be paid well," he went on to say. "However, quite clearly I am ready to put back with the money if for it the work is great fun."

But he insisted that Google fly him back to Germany once a week. "Important for me is that I every weekend somehow come to Cologne, in order to visit my daughter. Of course, there can be exceptions, but I would not be longer than a maximum of three weeks away from Cologne."

Well, little more than two days later, The Reg can confirm that Klein's URLs, including adwordsgoogle.de (http://adwordsgoogle.de), have now been redirected to legitimate Google sites.

Has Google given into Klein's demands? Or did the IT-loving German give up on his scheme and redirect the URLs on his own? It's hard to say. Google has yet to respond to our request for comment. ®

Related stories

The internet in your pocket? (5 November 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/05/open_handset_alliance/
Google phone-spotting reaches fever pitch (31 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/31/google_rumour_roundup/
Google corrals web 2.0 turkeys for Facebook fightback (31 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/31/google_open_social/
Google jumps ahead of ITV1 on Q3 ad revenue (30 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/google_itv1_q3_ad_revenue/
Googlite explains PageRank tweak (30 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/google_guru_explains_pagerank_change/
Google gets jiggy with MySQL (25 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/google_mysql_deal/
Google funds hold Firefox fate (for sure) (25 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/mozilla_releases_2006_financial_statement/