Eric Schmidt says that's the worst mistake he made as CEO of Google, though. They were well-positioned to clean up all the good engineers in Silicon Valley (lo

Eric Schmidt says that's the worst mistake he made as CEO of Google, though. They were well-positioned to clean up all the good engineers in Silicon Valley (lots of cash, solid business) and instead Facebook catalyzed their growth. I think they haven't forgotten, and that's why this isn't a blanket hiring freeze, it's them getting more selective. (Technically, '09 wasn't a hiring freeze either: I was hired in Jan 2009. My Noogler class had 13 people hired across all of Google for the 3 weeks it covered, and half of them had received their offers in July '08 - so effectively it was a hiring freeze.)