Google once wanted to hire a former Apple executive to help build an engineering team in Paris. On March 28, 2006, the Google senior vice president of engineering, Alan Eustace, emailed Steve Jobs to ask for permission to hire Jean-Marie Hullot, who was the CTO of Apple's applications division and had left the company in 2005, after serving four years in the position.
In his email, Eustace told Jobs that Hullot respected Apple and would comply with its non-compete terms. Google was even ready to drop the plan if Jobs had a serious concern about the hire. Jobs took 11 days to reply, and in his email, he first asked what Hullot would work on and mentioned, “We would have a problem if it is related to cell phone handsets.”
After Google confirmed all the details of Hullot's designation, Jobs agreed to the hire. The trouble came later when Hullot wanted to bring four former Apple engineers with him. Jobs objected and wrote that he would advise Google not to hire those engineers. Google agreed to the objections, and eventually dropped plans for the Paris center. Thus, Hullot never joined Google. Later, he founded the photo startup Fotonauts, which later became Fotopedia.
The old emails have now come to light through court records from a major tech worker case. These emails surfaced as part of the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case. The case looked at claims that Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe agreed not to hire each other's workers. The lawsuit involved about 64,000 engineers. When the case came to court, Judge Lucy Koh rejected an initial USD 324.5 million settlement, calling it too low. Instead, approved USD 415 million in September 2015, which amounts to around USD 5,770 per worker.
The Hullot exchange gives a rare look at how closely Jobs watched Apple's workers. The story may be almost 20 years old, but it offers a clear look at the fierce competition between Apple and Google. What started as one hiring plan ended up showing just how carefully Jobs guarded Apple's talent.