Google employees receive a special edition Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Christmas

You know what’s a byword for Christmas? Presents. And Google likes to give them to its employees come Christmas and this years’ is no exception.

As a “Thank you for your hard work throughout the year”, every Google employee in the company’s offices in London and Zurich has received a special Christmas gift in the form of an exclusive Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

What makes this particular Galaxy Nexus exclusive is its battery cover. It sports an unique pattern with various Android icons, specially designed for the hardworking Googlers. Sadly, however, hardware specs of the device remain unchanged.

I don’t know about you, but I am not entirely convinced that this is the best battery cover design Google could have created. In addition, as this is Google’s internal matters, it’s not yet confirmed if this is the only bonus all the 20,000+ Google employees are going to receive this Christmas season.

Reportedly, last years’ Christmas holidays, all 20,000 Google personnel received an $1,000 individual bonus plus 10% increase in salary as of January 1, 2011. But, you know, a Galaxy Nexus isn’t so bad either.

Google employees taste Ice Cream Sandwich on their Nexus S, mere mortals not far from getting it on theirs

Ever since Google announced the Galaxy Nexus and along with it Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, those of us with a Nexus S have been salivating at the chance of getting it on our own devices. Unfortunately, Google did not give any official date as to when the update will be made available for download.

It seems now, however, that it won’t be too long now. A Google employee posted on Google+ that he got the Ice Cream Sandwich on his Nexus S and that ‘it’s looking great’. The update was later on deleted from the site but you can see a screenshot below.

Usually when a product is near completion it is given to some of the company employees for testing, a process known as dogfooding and by the looks of it this is exactly what is happening with the ICS update for Nexus S. I guess it won’t be long now and if I have to make a guess we should see the update come out in this month itself.

Of course the impatient ones have had the option to install the custom ROM for quite some time now but there’s nothing like getting the goods directly from the factory.