The only way this story makes sense to me is if the engineer is one of the core contributors to Google Me, or some other strategically important new initiative.

The only way this story makes sense to me is if the engineer is one of the core contributors to Google Me, or some other strategically important new initiative. Those teams are small enough that every engineer counts, and a defection could even delay launch. Facebook would be interested in sabotaging that, but Google would pay even more to defend it.