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Google a broken hell for five-year-olds

Ex employees embrace life after beta

So, everyone and their brother is yapping about a recent blog post from Microsoftie Dare Obasanjo, who says he knows lots o' people who've forsaken Larry and Serg for Big Steve.

"Recently, I’ve been bumping into more and more people who’ve either left Google to come to Microsoft or got offers from both companies and picked Microsoft over Google," Obasanjo writes. "I believe this is part of a larger trend especially since I’ve seen lots of people who left the company for 'greener pastures' return in the past year (at least 8 people I know personally have rejoined)."

To prove his point, he trots out more blogs, from Microsoft true believers like Sergey Solyanik and Svetlin Nakov. Having returned to Microsoft after a stint at Google, Solyanik says that the world's largest ad broker has a serious problem with virtual insects.

"I was using Google software - a lot of it - in the last year, and slick as it is, there's just too much of it that is regularly broken. It seems like every week 10 per cent of all the features are broken in one or the other browser. And it's a different 10 per cent every week - the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced. This across Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and more," he opines. "The culture at Google values 'coolness' tremendously, and the quality of service not as much."

Meanwhile, Nakov says that after just a few interviews, he could tell that Google operated like an army of 5-year-olds. "I found for myself that Microsoft is better organized, managed and structured. Microsoft do software development in more professional way than Google. Their engineers are better. Their development process is better. Their products are better. Their technologies are better. Their interviews are better," he says.

"Google was like a kindergarden - young and not experienced enough people, an office full of fun and entertainment, interviews typical for junior people and lack of traditions in development of high quality software products."

This is all a bit rich when you consider that Microsoft gave the world Windows Vista. Just to give one example. But these aren't the first folk to question whether there's trouble in Google's purported paradise. Just recently, Fortune wondered why so many people are leaving the land of the free massage.

Over the past several months, Communications boss Elliot Schrage, sales queen Sheryl Sandberg, and executive chef Josef Desimone left for Facebook. CIO Douglas Merrill left for EMI. And CFO George Reyes left for nowhere in particular.

What most intrigues us is Dare Obasanjo's claim that so many people are returning to Microsoft after time at Google and other supposedly greener pastures. Ever wonder how far a tech giant would go to spy on the competition? ®

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