• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 29, 2007 10:46 AM

A lot has been said about the employee exodus at Yahoo, but fellow Web giant Google is also losing employees, particularly to Internet startups. Whereas Yahoo's staff defection has more to do with the company's recent failures, Google's has more to do with the kind of employee it seeks: entrepreneurs.

Such creative minds have been the secret to the search giant's success, but eventually employees want to go out on their own. As former Google employee Justin Rosenstein, a 24-year-old software engineer who left to join the social network site Facebook, says, another reason they leave is because Google, now 12,000 strong, can't execute as quickly as it used to, leaving many entrepreneur types feeling fidgety.

Also, for thousands of employees brought into Google between 2003 and 2004, some highly lucrative stock options are vesting, and with the company's stock hovering near all-time highs at around $530 per share, they may feel like cashing in and just hanging out for a while. For those who want to move on, there's the potential reward at a promising Web startup.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »