We didn’t verify if Google really has a history of $20,000-$30,000 holiday bonuses for employees. Regardless of past amounts, Googlers are getting Google phone instead this year. There is, after all, an economic crisis going on.
It could be worse. Employees at a certain other search engine got pink slips. Still, one imagines it’s a hard come-down from being so pampered.
Part of the memo, courtesy of Valleywag, reads this way:
Some of you will of course be wondering why we decided to change from a cash bonus to the Dream phone. Here are the reasons. First, we’ve never developed anything like the Android software before and this represented a unique opportunity to celebrate that achievement. Googlers globally have been asking for the Dream phone and we’re looking forward to seeing all the different things that you do with them. This is a chance for us to once again dogfood a product and make it even better! Second, as we discussed in our email this week, the current economic crisis requires us to be more conservative about how we spend our money. We felt that giving the Dream phone would be a great holiday present – something we could all celebrate.
The Dream phone is marketed as G1 at T-Mobile, and the term “dogfood” here means to test internally. The good news is the phone is customized, completely unlocked and work as WiFi devices from the outset.
We wonder how many Googlers, after placing a down payment on something, are reciting Clark W. Griswald’s famous Jelly-of-the-Month club speech from Christmas Vacation:
Hey. If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like [Insert Billionaire Google Executive Here], my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there [in Mountain View] with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, fore-fleshing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?
Happy Holidays everybody.
