Having decried corporate April's Fools stunts, I find Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawondy's trick - a kind of wife-swapish trade of superstar bloggers, from Google to Yahoo rather intriguing.

Why don't innovative companies trade key players the way the Yankees and Red Sox would? I suppose the labor market isn't as constrained as it is in pro sports. And there are those non-compete agreements for certain executives.

But for bloggin' superstars like Matt and Jeremy, I doubt that Google and Yahoo! actually have them under contract - there'd be no Kai-fu Lee contract stuff to deal with.

Google could try to poach JZ away for a few million bucks. Wouldn't that be worth it? (If you say "no", I'll remind you that Google easily paid over $10mil to get Lee.) You tellin' me that Zawodny ain't worth 1/4 of a Kai-fu Lee?

But if Zawodny was stolen away, I don't think you'd hear Terry Semel say what Ballmer allegedly screamed: "I'm going to f---ing kill Google!" (BTW, how's that going Steve?)

On the other side of the trade, Cutts is probably untouchable for under $50mil due to his early join date and Google's share value. So he probably can't be bought.

Anyway I don't know if Jeremy would be worth it or not, but I'm intrigued by the possibility in the near future of a famous corporate blogger being treated like a free-agent. Certainly there are some out there that would be worth that type of money...

Any candidates come to mind?

¶ 4/02/2006