Ricardo Reyes, who started collecting paychecks from Google in 2007, is set to officially begin working for Tesla in two weeks’ time on September 14th.  He’ll hold the title of "Vice President for Communications" within the company.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a statement, "This is further evidence that Tesla is aggressively recruiting from both Silicon Valley and the traditional automotive industry to build the best possible team."

Reyes himself then added, "Despite its small size, Tesla has become a significant player in the automotive industry and has already served as a powerful catalyst for other automakers to develop green vehicles.  The opportunity to join Tesla and help make a difference to the world is the only thing that could have enticed me to leave Google."

So there’s a sort of compliment for the search giant, even as it’s losing a key executive.  Or maybe an insult, since Google often claims to do good.

Anyway, Google hasn’t yet made any announcements about Reyes’s departure or who might replace him.

In Silicon Valley all corporate leaks are referred to Valleywag, where they live in infamy. It was there Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk’s “digital witch hunt” was chronicled and the practice of employee entrapment was given light. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg subsequently emulated Musk, also sending out specially encrypted emails—messages with slight alterations in the text: “I am” versus “I’m,” etc.—to identify employees leaking news indicating Zuckerberg’s totalitarian management style as the chief catalyst for mass executive exoduses.

Newly appointed Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz pleaded with her staff to tighten their lips about what was going on inside the company before reportedly going all Chuck Norris and threatening “to drop-kick to f**ing Mars” press-friendly employees.

Unfortunately for all the executives mentioned, employees just widened the information funnel.

The most recent and humorous target of employee retaliation is John Soden III, a managing director at San Francisco based investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners. An email from Soden to “everyone below the MD level” saying that unless they were “an orthodox something” they should get their butts back to the office on Good Friday and that they should get jobs as tellers if they want bank holidays.

Soden probably didn’t anticipate his whip-cracking would end up on Valleywag, nor, probably, did he think his detractors would set up a spoof Twitter account, where the Fake John Soden bemoans how only one person worked all night, thinks sushi is Chinese food, and yanks employees out of mosques during working hours.

Some managers probably yearn for the pre-digital culture days when crudely drawn cartoons popped up in break rooms and employee bathrooms. 
 

Of course, “interested in” is not the same as “committed to,” and in an email to WebProNews, a Yahoo spokesperson readily admitted that “only 7% of those surveyed actually own an AFV.”  Still, this market segment appears ready to enjoy a constant expansion as people shop for new cars.

Automakers are, if anything, behind the curve.  On the American front, the Chevrolet Volt is still years away from production, and Tesla’s electric car efforts seem to have stalled.  Even industry leaders Toyota and Honda only have a few hybrids in their lineups.

The Yahoo Autos study didn’t see the interest in fuel-efficient vehicles going away, though, so consumers should still be ready whenever something interesting is released.  And since Yahoo went to the trouble of surveying 2,949 people, we’ll note that the Yahoo Autos Green Center is standing by in the meantime.

“[W]e’ve built a way for you to connect to things other than people, without cluttering your Friend List,” explained Justin Rosenstein on The Facebook Blog.  “I love the Indian restaurant downstairs from Facebook HQ, and now that Junnoon has a Facebook Page, I can become a fan.”

Rosenstein then continued, “This is useful, not just to let Junnoon know I love their food, but also because my friends can see this affiliation on my profile or in their News Feeds and then go to Junnoon’s Page to learn more about it — or even make a reservation, thanks to an OpenTable app installed right on the page.”

Not every page is as well-developed as Junnoon’s, yet, in a short bout of testing, Facebook’s search function didn’t ever fail to find one.  In fact, the range of people and things that can have pages is quite wide – there was at least one result each for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the Tesla Roadster, and Google.  Also, after just a few days of life, those pages have attracted 24, 43, and 61 fans, respectively.

That won’t set any records – a surprisingly successful New York Times app drew over 1,000 users in a similar period of time.  Still, Facebook’s product pages would seem to open yet another avenue in which the social network can bring people and potential advertisers together.

Don’t get too excited; the focus of these rumors, a vehicle dubbed the Think, is nowhere near as sexy as the Tesla Roadster, and as admitted by the Think’s official website, its top speed is under 65 mph.  The Think is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an electric Ferrari.  It’s not even an electric Hyundai.  But the Think would fall in line with the sort of environmentally sound thinking that Google supports.

According to Pandia, Dean Kamen (of Segway sorta-fame) “would like to use the Th!nk as a mobile generator that can draw energy from the power grid when needed and send electricity back during periods of peak demand . . .”

Now, nothing’s decided yet, but “[f]or that to happen he needs a partner that can handle large amounts of data over global networks.  The most obvious choice for that kind work is, of course, Google.”  And Google actually had the Think people over for a little sit-down.

I can’t get too excited about this little vehicle, but, even as a car guy, I’ve got no objections to seeing it enter the market.  I’d even be interested in seeing Google support the Think – that could bring those electric Ferraris here all the sooner.