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In 2011, Google made headlines for offering an eye-popping 100 million dollars package to Neal Mohan, an Indian-American executive, to keep him from leaving the company. This massive offer was part of a fierce battle to retain one of their top product strategists, proving how much Google valued his talent and vision.
According to a 2011 TechCrunch report, Google's Back then, Neal Mohan was about to join Twitter (now X) as Chief Product Officer. Twitter’s former board member David Rosenblatt, who had worked with Mohan before, wanted him badly. To stop this, Google offered Mohan 100 million dollars in restricted stock units, vesting over several years, to persuade him to stay.
Neal Mohan is a Stanford electrical engineering graduate who started his career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). He later joined NetGravity, a startup that was acquired by DoubleClick. At DoubleClick, Mohan quickly rose to become Vice President of Business Operations, showing strong leadership in digital advertising.
When Google acquired DoubleClick for 3.1 billion dollars in 2007, Neal Mohan took on a leadership role within Google’s advertising business. By 2011, he was a crucial figure in developing Google’s ad products and shaping the future of YouTube’s platform, becoming a driving force behind their success.
Twitter’s talent hunt wasn’t limited to Mohan. The company also tried to recruit Sundar Pichai, who was leading Google’s Chrome and Chrome OS teams. Google responded by offering Pichai a 50 million dollars stock grant to keep him from moving to Twitter, reflecting the fierce competition for tech leadership at the time.
Today, Neal Mohan is the CEO of YouTube, having taken over in 2023 after Susan Wojcicki’s departure. Sundar Pichai became Google’s CEO in 2015 and later Alphabet’s CEO in 2019. Both men remain influential leaders, shaping the future of the tech world.
This story highlights how tech giants like Google go to great lengths, including massive pay packages, to retain talented leaders. Executives like Mohan and Pichai are crucial to driving innovation and maintaining a company’s competitive edge in a cutthroat industry.
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