Giving recent employees a piece of the action...

Google plans to start an unorthodox stock options programme in April that will allow employees to sell their vested options in an online auction, the search giant announced late on Tuesday.

Traditionally, employees have two ways to deal with stock options: exercise (take ownership) of them once they have 'vested' and sell them at the current trading price, and pay back the company for their so-called strike price (that's typically the trading price the day the options were granted), or hold on to them after exercising them.

This new, Transferable Stock Option programme gives nonexecutive Google employees a third option: a secondary market of sorts managed by Morgan Stanley where preapproved financial institutions can bid on vested options. It doesn't apply to options granted prior to the search giant's initial public offering.

Read more: silicon.com