After news of Gmail’s Kevin Fox leaving Google made the rounds, another significant departure gained notice.

This time, it was the discovery that Stoll had penned a farewell last month on his blog, where he revealed he would leave the search advertising company at the end of 2007.

“So, for all of my friends still in the ‘plex, know that “it’s not you (Google), it’s me,” and I hope that we can still stay close after we take some time apart,” said Stoll.

Mashable wondered if this departure was part of an epidemic. Jason Shellen, who came to Google when it bought Blogger’s parent Pyra Labs, Vanessa Fox, patron deity of Google Webmaster Central, and AdSense developer Gokul Rajaram all hit the exits in 2007.

From our perspective, we would guess on a common factor: vesting stock options. Once someone has a few million or more at their fingertips, the temptation to move on to other things would be immense.

If the options aren’t as favorable, as would be the case for newer Google staffers, the temptation becomes “join the next hot startup and get filthy rich.” Either way, we would be surprised if money wasn’t the main factor in these departures. We expect to see more of them.

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