For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it.
Google Ventures, no matter how spectacularly they might do as VCs, will always be several orders of magnitude less important to Google than Gmail. Google Ventures invests $300 million per year. Say they are always, every year, one of the top VCs so they--every year--deliver 3x on the money invested a few years before. They are still delivering less than $1 billion, less than 2% of Google's revenue.
In reality, it will probably be more like 1%, plus or minus 4%. And also, in reality, it won't be considered revenue, it will be Extraordinary Gains from Non-operational Events, or some such accounting gibberish, and nobody on Wall Street will give them any credit for it.
For this to be a worry, every person up both branches of a very large hierarchical organization tree--all the way up to where a Google Ventures employee and a Gmail developer both report to the same person--would have to agree to it.
That's ridiculous. The risk isn't institutionalized abuse, the threat is an unscrupulous guy in the Ventures group who has a buddy who works in the gmail (or other) groups. Calls him up one night and says, "Can you do me a big favor? Check out so-and-so and see what he's working on."
It isn't about Google's bottom line on wall street, it is about an individual abusing access to further his own career.
You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company would be more likely to help each other outside of the corporate reward structure than they would be to help someone outside the company, who they might just happen to have personal or social obligations to.
If there were an unscrupulous person in the gmail group, he would be more likely to break company policy (and, I think, the law) with someone who does not work for Google than with someone who does, unless it were motivated by someone up the chain at Google itself.
Saying that someone at Gmail is sharing your secrets may be a worry. That they would share them with Google Ventures is far less likely than that they would share them with someone else entirely. And frankly, if someone were to try to profit from stolen information, they'd be looking at hedge fund manager emails and investment banker emails. The very slight edge you might get from seeing some VC's email is worth less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, if you risk-adjust it and discount it back to the present.
You make the false assumption that people in different divisions of a very large company
I'm assuming that people within a company are more likely to know each other and know what areas they work on versus simply "working at google." They have all kinds of opportunities to rub shoulders - previous projects they've worked on together, company social events, even just riding the google bus to work each day.
While outsiders are also a risk, working for the same company substantially increases the opportunities.
"deliver 3x on the money invested a few years before. They are still delivering less than $1 billion, less than 2% of Google's revenue."
That's virtually all profit, not revenue, and WSt would be thrilled. And all you would need a crooked employee to do that. Maybe a GV partner could approach a SRE...ala http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-53.htm
Goldman Sachs and PG board member has been corrupted that way, imagine a lowly engineer that could triple his salary in a heartbeat.
Google Ventures, no matter how spectacularly they might do as VCs, will always be several orders of magnitude less important to Google than Gmail. Google Ventures invests $300 million per year. Say they are always, every year, one of the top VCs so they--every year--deliver 3x on the money invested a few years before. They are still delivering less than $1 billion, less than 2% of Google's revenue.
In reality, it will probably be more like 1%, plus or minus 4%. And also, in reality, it won't be considered revenue, it will be Extraordinary Gains from Non-operational Events, or some such accounting gibberish, and nobody on Wall Street will give them any credit for it.