Google Loses Top South American Exec to Facebook

The poaching of good tech workers doesn't just happen in Silicon Valley -- it's now gone global.

Facebook announced its new vice president of sales, Alexandre Hohagen, Google's former top executive in Latin America, reported the New York Times Bits blog. Apparently six years ago  Hohagen helped establish Google’s Latin American presence and in 2005 was named general manager of Google Brazil. He was later promoted to vice president of Google Latin America.

Currently, Google's social network, Orkut, is tops in Brazil but Facebook is competing globally for users including in South America, India and Japan. Although Facebook is mum about its campaign in Latin America, most are assuming that it's after Brazil, one of the world's emerging economies, where Orkut is preferred 3:1 over Facebook.

Because of ever-expanding social networks, if Google wants to stop its employees from jumping ship it will have to strive to keep all its employees -- not just American, but also Indian or Brazilian -- happy.

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