May 6, 2008 5:33 AM PDT

Top-shelf Googler heads to Facebook

Posted by Caroline McCarthy

Another prominent Google employee has jumped ship to Facebook.

Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, has been hired in a similar role at the fast-growing social network, reports Kara Swisher of All Things Digital.

Schrage's role at both companies, founded in a legal rather than marketing background, involves dealing with D.C. lobbyists and policymakers in addition to the press. His move to Facebook follows Sheryl Sandberg, who became chief operating officer at Facebook after a stint as vice president of global sales at Google. Schrage will report to Sandberg, Swisher writes, but he inquired about the role at Facebook directly through founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rather than Sandberg.

Elliot Schrage

(Credit: Google)

Swisher posted an internal e-mail from Zuckerberg to employees. The young CEO explained that Schrage "will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do...Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook's policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things."

Facebook representatives were not immediately available to comment or provide a public statement.

The news was originally hinted at by gossip blog Valleywag, which said earlier this week that Schrage was interviewing for the Facebook post and speculated that it had to do with his opposition to some tawdry goings-on at Google's top ranks. But as headhunting firm Binc recently found, Google employees tend to leave the company for a variety of concrete reasons, not the least of which is the fact that corporate culture has made Mountain View less of the revolution and more of The Man.

Aside from Sandberg, Facebook already employs a number of other ex-Googlers such as Ethan Beard, former director of social media; Benjamin Ling, former head of Google Checkout; and YouTube's Gideon Yu, who made the jump to Facebook shortly after Google acquired the video-sharing site.

Several other high-ranking Googlers have left for non-Facebook (and even non-Valley) destinations, like Chief Information Officer Doug Merrill, who left the company for a job at music label EMI.