> everything does, according to most engineering contracts there
Most of the contracts I've heard about only transfer ownership if you use company resources to work on it. Any project done in your free time, with your own resources, belongs to you.
Not at Google.
Wow that's a fairly serious clause!
Any source for this?
More likely, it's someone's personal project they worked on in their spare time, but it still belongs to Google (because everything does, according to most engineering contracts there).