Who wants to do business with Google in Africa? Many of us.
You must have read the story about how a Paypal executive who was negotiating a partnership with Google ended up working for Google to develop the same product Paypal was supposed to deliver to Google.
Nevertheless, it is such an easy thing with a behemoth that Page and Brin built to buy off the chief negotiator of Paypal while the deal was in progress. And Paypal is such a sorry company. They seem not to have anyone running the old ebay empire. How can you allow such to happen. If Osama Bieder was paid $10m by Google and with him you can lose a business that runs in hundreds of millions, why not buy him back – we mean offer a better deal to him. Google did the same thing when one of its executives was poked by Twitter or Facebook few months ago. They gave the guy restricted shares and locked him up with $50m or thereabout.
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Nothing serious, but it calls for concern that a company you want to partner can buy your staff. Google Africa must not do this in Africa, otherwise no one will have a chance. Imagine if you come up with a technology Google wants to partner with or buy. Instead of buying that, they just decide to buy over the team that built it and they will go and do exactly the same thing. They can do it because they have the money, but it does not make it right.
Tekedia will be waiting to read what Google has to say in court. While Osama has the right to look for jobs anywhere, Google has a responsibility to at least wait for that deal to fail or go through before offering him a job.
Their present Vice President of Payments, Osama Bedier, was PayPal’s Vice President of Product Development.
