Google's Real Problem -- Getting Things Done?

[Commentary] In the past week or so, Google saw three well-known executives leave the company.

First it was Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube who decided it was time to hang up his CEO spurs. (Hurley is staying on as a special adviser.) Then came news that AdMob co-founder Omar Hamoui was leaving. And over the weekend news spread that Lars Rasmussen, who was one of the co-creators of Google Maps and Google Wave is leaving. Rasmussen is trading Google for Facebook. He apparently likes the new gig so much that he would give up Sydney and move to the San Francisco Bay Area. According to some estimates, one in five Facebook employees have ties back to Google, including COO Sheryl Sandberg and CTO Bret Taylor. Google has over 23,331 employees according to company's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook has about 2,000 employees.

Rasmussen in his interview explained that getting things done (GTD) was a big problem at Google and shutting down his project, Google Wave, a year after it was made available as a beta, is a sign that it was getting hard to get things done at the search giant.