Apparently, Mountain View, Calif., is a recession-free zone, judging by the fat bonuses four of Google Inc.’s top executives took home for their 2008 performance.
The news came the same day that CEO Eric Schmidt said at an investor conference that things were “dire,” and that improvement in the online advertising game would be unlikely to show up until 2010. Overall for 2008, Google lost 57 percent of its market value, or about $120 billion.
Schmidt did not take a bonus.
Nonetheless, the lucky bigwigs each received 2008 bonuses of more than $1.2 million, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission made public on Tuesday. This was a reward for helping the Googster eke out a modest 1 percent profit gain for the year (profits rose 37 percent in 2007, as a baseline). The report didn't include salary or stock compensation figures, but that information should be disclosed in the next few weeks in Google’s proxy statement.
The reward-for-losses approach might rile up investors, but at least Google never took government bailout funds.
