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Comment by stevencorona | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised she didn't have some kind of non-compete with Google, but they are illegal/unenforceable in CA, right? (I'm on the East Coast so pardon my lack of knowledge).

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What if Sergei and Larry WANT her to go to Yahoo. Not to "compete" but to build it out in some other way, to build it as a service that google can then acquire.

She can go there to experiment on ideas that maybe even google had internally but couldn't risk to do with google viewers...

There has been talk about Google stealing Yahoo back away from Microsoft on an ad deal, so that would also be another reason. It could be worth hundreds of millions per year to land that deal with Yahoo. The legal hurdles are huge though.

Yahoo would probably make a lot more $ too because AdCenter is a joke.

My thoughts ran to whether Google might want (in part) to ensure that credible competition exists/continues. There's been a lot of "monopoly" language and perhaps imminent regulation flying about.

Any way you cut this, Google seems ready to benefit from this coup.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Sergei and Larry wanted her gone, period. She has had a lackluster career at Google, and they may have gladly watched her move out of the way.

hmm....wait a minute...being passed over for SVP...going to yahoo....SHE'S THEIR NEW LUCA BRASI!!!

Wikipedia agrees with your memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California

Non-competes are totally unenforceable in CA as a condition of employment. If you sell your startup to an acquirer, the contract can include a non-compete subject to fairly strict conditions of reasonableness.

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