Facebook is not playing around. With the luring of Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer at Google, this is the second major player Facebook has stolen from Google's umbrella in recent weeks. Gideon Yu, the CFO at YouTube, has already left for Facebook in August.
Ling, who hails from Stanford, was a product-management director for Google and oversaw all of the company's e-commerce initiatives, including Google Checkout and Google SMS. This executive shake up is all adding to the speculation that Facebook is gearing up for an IPO. All the while, Google's stock continues to soar. Is Google's top talent fearing the worst from the search giant, or is Facebook just that sexy? No worries. Google may be planning its revenge with an open platform of its own.