Google hires Vinton Cerf, an Internet founding father

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, hired Web technology inventor Vinton Cerf from MCI Inc. as its chief Internet ''evangelist" to create computer networks that will support new products.

Cerf, 62, said he approached chief executive Eric Schmidt two months ago and may help Mountain View, Calif.-based Google form copyright and privacy policies.

The hiring of Cerf, who spent two decades at MCI, extends a campaign by Google to bring in technological talent to help maintain its lead in search over Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google in June hired Louis Monier, founder of the AltaVista search engine, and in March lured Mark Lucovsky, one of the creators of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. Google is now in a legal battle over hiring former Microsoft China executive Kai-Fu Lee.

''Google and Microsoft are locked in a brain race to see who can hire the biggest brains on the planet," said Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster in Silicon Valley.

''I've watched with great excitement the ascent of Google," Cerf said. ''Google is creating a new high-level infrastructure."

''The Internet has many fathers but he was one of the chief fathers," Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0, said of Cerf.