Legal eagle flies to Twitter, joins growing flock of ex-Googlers

A prominent lawyer who negotiated many of Google’s censorship fights with foreign governments has now landed at Twitter.

Nicole Wong, who in recent years fought to unblock YouTube service in Turkey and Blogger in Pakistan, announced the news today:

While such moves are hardly uncommon in the tech sector, Wong’s departure comes amidst what is starting to look like a mini-exodus from Google to Twitter. She joins general counsel Alex Macgillivray and other former Google lawyers Ben Lee and Bakari Brock. Meanwhile, Gabriel Stricker, Karen Wickre and Jim Prosser have recently joined Carolyn Penner on the communications team.

The moves comes at a time when Twitter has been branding itself as an advocate for the “user’s voice” and has gone to court several times over free speech issues.

More deeply, the Google DNA also runs through executives Katie Stanton and Doug Bowman, while Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and founder Evan Williams also did a stint at the search giant.


GigaOM