Google Poach Apple High-Up for 'Secret Project'

According to reports Google has broken its anti-poaching pact, hiring an Apple senior director of product integrity to work on a new secret project.

On 4 February Venture Beat reported that Google had lured away its highest Apple employee to date, hiring Simon Prakash.

According to his LinkedIn page Prakash worked for Apple for more than eight years, leaving the company as its senior director of product integrity - presumably meaning he was responsible for quality control on all Apple products.

In his new role at Google Prakash will reportedly be working on a new secret project. Believed to be run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin - who is in charge of a large chunk of the tech behemoth's covert research and development projects - no other details have been released regarding the project's end product.

The news follows widespread speculation that Google and Apple were among the five technology companies currently being investigated by the US Department of Justice for establishing illegal anti-poaching deals.

The speculation suggests that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm all stand accused of entering into illegal agreements pledging not to recruit each other's employees. If found guilty of the charges the companies could reportedly face damages amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds.

Worse still for the five, according to Bloomberg, US District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California had clarified that even if the claims were dismissed, the plaintiffs would be given a chance to amend and refile their complaint.

"They still have an antitrust claim that's going forward so I don't want to see any obstruction on discovery," Bloomberg reported Koh as saying during a hearing.

When contacted by the International Business Times UK Google representatives clarified they were looking into the authenticity of the reports.