Google announces in-house stock-options market

Google has just announced that it will create an in-house stock-options market that will provide a way for employees to sell their options to institutions like investment banks!

At a lot of firms like Google, employees hold a lot of unexercisable options. Now Google employees have a way to monetize them. Large stock option givers like Microsoft, Oracle, Infosys never did that. Google shows that it really wants to make new roads.

Anyway, folks at Google in Mountain View have already started thinking of ways to benefit from this. I guess we might even see a stock-option pricing model appearing as part of Google Labs!

Will other companies will follow suit? Or will they point to some HR expense accounting issue that won't let them do this?