Google employees get to work on personal projects

With the announcement that Google Releases Orkut Social Networking Service comes this interesting nugget:

All employees at Google are allowed to spend twenty percent of their time working on personal interests, a policy Google has to encourage creativity.

What an amazing policy! Many companies would look at that as wasted time, which it would be if you had lackluster, unenthusiastic employees. But if you’ve got employees that dig what they do, this seems like a great way to experiment in whole new areas (while making employees that much happier). Bravo, Google.