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Google CFO nabs $1.2m bonus for five months' work

This ain't Wall Street

The Chocolate Factory's new chief financial officer has received a million-dollar bonus after just five months on the job.

With a Tuesday SEC filing, Google said that in 2008, it splashed $6.3 million in bonus money on five of the top execs working under co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and chief executive Eric Schmidt. The company's Executive Bonus Plan typically bypasses the big three.

Patrick Pichette, who assumed the CFO post on August 1, took home $1.244 million. And the man he replaced, George Reyes, landed an extra $675,000 five months after retiring.

The biggest winner was senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg, who nabbed a $1.638 million bonus in 2008. Rosenberg is the man once who told the world Google would gradually tweak its search ad platform until it showed only one ad per page - only to be contradicted tout de suite by Sergey Brin.

But it would seem that Rosenberg's spin is just want the company wants. As he continues to paint rose-colored pictures of the Google ad platform during the company's earnings calls, Brin has all but disappeared from the quarterly briefings.

With Google allowing significantly more ads onto its search pages in recent months, the company's search monopoly continues to pull in the dough - even as the worldwide economy continues its downward spiral. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the Chocolate Factory pumped revenues up by 18 per cent over the previous year.

Thanks to this Meltdown proofiness, big bonuses also landed in the hands of senior vice president of engineering Robert Eustace and senior vice president of global sales and business development Omid Kordestani. Both took home $1.376 million.

Meanwhile, the company's share price is hovering just above $320, down from a high of $747.24 on November 7, 2007. And famously, the stock doesn't pay a dividend. But all you shareholders can rest assured that Google is at least taking care of its own. The company has also instituted a $460 million stock option buyback program that will allow its employees to retrieve their options from the bottom of the ocean. ®

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