United Kingdom, Feb. 20 -- Google once offered an employee a 300 percent pay rise to stop him from joining a rival company.

The search engine giant learned that one employee was planning to move to Perplexity AI but in an attempt to stop him from jumping ship, allegedly offered him three times his salary as motivation to stay, according to Aravind Srinivas on the Big Technology Podcast.

He claimed that the employee in question was part of "search team" and had no direct involvement with its AI division.

The comments come just weeks after top nbosses at Google warned staff that there would be mass job cuts later this year as they work towards their "ambitious goals" and invest in big priorities moving forward.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai ...