What happens when you hire the best and brightest minds in the industry… put them all together… and give them on-the-clock time to think about and work on whatever they want to?

They get good ideas that they’d rather not share with you.

That’s why I wasn’t really too surprised by the news that two of Google’s top engineers were leaving the company to become paid entrepreneurs at Benchmark Capital. According to VentureBeat, Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, who both played a large role in the creation of Google Maps, decided they were ready to start their own company together.

It’s no big secret that Google allows their employees to spend time on their own, personal projects at work. It’s also no big secret that many of these personal projects have and will continue to make their way public to become part of Google’s official portfolio of services. Per a clause in Google’s employment contract, anything created on company time - whether it’s official business or personal - belongs to Google.

So when you put really smart people together and give them the freedom to play around and do their own thing, they’re eventually going to have a great idea. They then have two options: 1) play at Google and ultimately hand their idea over to the Big G or 2) leave Google to develop their idea fully, independently, and financially separated from Mountain View.

I’d be willing to bet Taylor and Norris spent many a clock-hour at Google thinking about, talking about, and planning the “consumer Internet business” they’re leaving to start. I’d also be willing to bet that as more and more Googlers leave to pursue their own projects, those who do remain will be much less likely to share their “personal projects” with Google management.

Sure… a great idea could get you a nice promotion at Google. But no matter how many steps up the ladder you take at Google, you’re never going to be a Larry Page or a Sergey Brin. If that’s your ambition… best to go it alone and hope for the best.

Because you know what they say:  nothing ventured… nothing gained.