Eric Schmidt: "Phone call from Meg Whitman"

Dec 14, 2021

From: Eric Schmidt
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 10:52 PM
To: Executive Management Group; Bill Campbell; arnon[REDACTED]
Subject: Phone call from Meg Whitman

DO NOT FORWARD

Meg called to talk about our hiring practices. Here is what she said:

1. Google is the talk of the valley because we are driving salaries up across the board. People are just waiting for us to fall and get back at us for our "unfair" practices now.

2. Our recruiting practices are "zero sum" and it appears that somewhere in Google we are targeting EBay to "hurt them" and its the reputation that we are doing this against Yahoo, EBay and MSFT (I denied this.)

3. Apparently a Google recruiter called Maynard Webb (their COO) and had a meeting with him. Here is what the recruiter said:

a) Google is looking for a COO

b) the position will pay $10 m over 4 years.

c) the COO will be part of the "CEO succession plan" (i.e. in line to be CEO).

d) Maynard has declined to pursue this.

Based on this (falsehoods) I have directed Arnon to fire the recruiter immediately for cause.

4. This was a rough call from a good friend. We need to get this fixed.

Eric

[This document is from In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (2011).]

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