This year, Google employees will receive a version of T-Mobile’s G1 cell phone as Xmas gift Instead of the $1,000 pay cheque bonus. The custom G1 phone will be given to 85 per cent of Google’s 20,123 global staff in the United States, Western and Central Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Japan according to an internal Email sent to Google employees. Small calculations, this save at least $17M for Google !!

An anonymous Googler has passed along a Q&A covering the full details of their oh-so-Dreamy holiday bonus to Gizmodo :

The holiday bonus is a Google tradition. In the past, we have chosen to make this a monetary gift. This year we decided to try something different: on December 19th, we will begin distributing free Dream phones to Googlers worldwide.

A great opportunity to encourage google employees to try the dream phone and dogfood the phones !