Nov 12, 2010 10:38 GMT  ·  By

Just as Yahoo is preparing for massive layoffs, Google is fighting harder to keep its employees. The company has been increasing efforts to stop its employees from leaving for hotter companies, especially Facebook. Google is now said to have offered $3.5 million to a staff engineer to convince him to stay.

TechCrunch says that this particular engineer, which was being courted by Facebook, was offered $3.5 million in restricted stock to not take up Facebook's offer.

There aren't that many other details, but the number speaks for itself. While this probably isn't the norm at Google these days - don't expect random engineers to be offered millions of dollars to stick around too often - it does show that the 'war' is escalating.

It is said that Google regularly offers 10 percent to 15 percent raises as well as cash and stock bonuses of up to $500,000 to employees wanting to leave.

Facebook has around to 2,000 employees and is growing fast. Close to becoming the largest website on the planet and with revenue growing at a fast rate, it's an attractive company. And the prospect of a multi-billion dollar IPO is hard to ignore.

Google has well over 20,000 employees around the world and, for now, it seems that at least 100, but not that many more, have left Google for Facebook.

The Mountain View giant isn't exactly bleeding employees, unlike its neighbor Yahoo, which, apart from losing a big number of key people over the past couple of years, is about to fire at least 650 employees next month.

Google is now a huge, publicly traded, company. While it offers great work conditions, above average salaries and bonuses, some people are looking for more of a challenge. And some other people are looking to become rich once the companies they go to work for, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on, file for an IPO.