I rabbit-holed to the 2005 "irate call" from Steve Jobs: https://www.techemails.com/p/sergey-brin-irate-call-from-ste...
Does anyone know who was the REDACTED browser expert being recruited by Google?
Does anyone know who was the REDACTED browser expert being recruited by Google?
On one hand I understand how Jobs would have been angry about Google trying to poach the Safari team for Chrome, but on the other I completely agree that anti-poaching schemes (as well as non-compete clauses) are harmful to employees and illegal for good reason.
One fair solution for employees would presumably have been to deal with it head on and make competing offers up to the level of the Safari team's actual value to Apple, but companies are rarely enthusiastic about that as it costs them money and encourages other employees to ask for raises and/or to interview at other companies (probably to discover that they are underpaid.)
An interesting possibility would have been for Apple and Google (or Google and Mozilla for that matter) to collaborate more closely on web browsers, although that would have run into problems eventually due to business incentives.
Sadly one of the primary results from Chrome seems to have been the erosion of Firefox's browser share.
This was 2005, well before that, which is part of what makes it interesting.
I think this was about the time that Apple picked up the KDE Konqueror browser Webkit platform and reworked it. I seem to recall there being some objections to Apple fulfilling its open-source obligations by tossing a massive patch "over the wall" ...
P.S. quick search result, 2003: https://dot.kde.org/2003/01/08/apple-announces-new-safari-br...
Money does not solve all problems. Sometimes people leave companies and there is no dollar value that will get them to come back.