Google Hands Out "Dogfood" as Christmas Bonus

Groans are issuing from the Googleplex over this year’s holiday bonus. In the past, the search engine paid cash–as much as $20,000 or $30,000 per Googler, we hear. This year? A cellphone.

Oh, but not just any cellphone: A version of the G1 currently sold for $179.99 by T-Mobile, which runs Google’s Android operating system. Android is the fruit of Google founders’ Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s strange obsession with the wireless market, launched in a fit of jealousy over the growing number of phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. (Imagine that: Google, jealous of Microsoft for a change.)

In an email, Google management blames the economic crisis and suggests that this is a great opportunity to “dogfood” the phones–an unappetizing tech-industry euphemism for testing products in-house. This is what has become of the company that was once deemed the best place in the world to work: Canceled bonuses and unpaid labor.

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