Google is denying reports that it is suffering a brain drain following the departure of some of its most qualified staff.

The whisperings began following the admittal that the company's head of global communications and public affairs has jumped ship and is to take on a new role at Facebook.

According to the Beeb, Elliot Schrage's departure follows that of a string of senior Google staff.

These include Sheryl Sandberg, who is now Facebook's chief operating officer, but was vice president of global sales at Google.

At the very top of the Facebook hierachy is CFO Gideon Yu, who was previously the chief financial officer (CFO) at YouTube but left soon after Google bought his company.

And Google seems also to be losing senior engineers and managers - some of whom have quit to start up their own companies whilst others are now on the roster of new ventures including Zillow, FriendFeed, Twitter and Xobni, adds the BBC.

But Google denies anything is amiss saying: "We have a deep management pool at Google", and adding that it receives 1300 CVs every day.

In the meantime, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is celebrating bagging his latest recruit.

>> Via - BBC News