Tech Mails

irate call from steve jobs

Sergey Brin to Executive Management Group and Joan Braddi, February 13, 2005

Exhibit
From
Sergey Brin
Sent
Sunday, February 13, 2005 1:06 AM
To
Executive Management Group, Joan Braddi
Subject
irate call from steve jobs
so i got a call from steve jobs today who was very agitated. it was about us recruiting from the safari team. he was sure we were building a browser and were trying to get the safari team. he made various veiled threats too though i am not inclined to hold them against him too much as he seemed beside himself (as eric would say). anyhow, i told him we were not building a browser and that to my knowledge we were not systematically going after the safari team in particular. and that we should talk about various opportunities. i also said i would follow up and check on our recruiting strategies wrt apple and safari. he seemed soothed. so i just wanted to check what our status was in various respects and what we want to do about partners/friendly companies and recruiting. on the browser, i know and told him that we have mozilla people working here ... largely on firefox. i did not mention we may release an enhanced version but i am not sure we are going to yet. on recruiting i have heard recently of one candidate out of apple that had browser expertise so i guess he would be on safari. i mentioned this to steve and he told me he was cool with us hiring anyone who came to us but was angry about systematic solicitation. i don't know if there is some systematic safari recruiting effort htat we have. so please update me on what you know here and on what you think we should have as policy. on another note, it seems silly to have both firefox and safari. perhaps there is some unificaiton strategy that we can get these two to pursue. combined, they certainly have enough marketshare to drive webmasters. --sergey
SJX-000002

About this email

Google co-founder Sergey Brin reported to Google executives on a phone call from Steve Jobs about Google recruiting members of Apple's Safari team. Kept for context; Jobs did not write this message.

The whole thread

  1. Feb 13, 2005 Sergey Brin so i got a call from steve jobs today who was very agitated. it was about us recruiting from the safari team.…
  2. Feb 17, 2005 Sergey Brin So I got another irate call from jobs today. I don't think we should let that determine our hiring strategy…