How's this for ugly?

One CEO tells another to stop poaching employees, so the other agrees, fires the recruiter, and then apologizes ... to the CEO.

The men involved were Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt.

This is one of the stories revealed from a class action suit between employees and the power players in Silicon Valley. An email was upturned in the case that shows a conversation between Jobs and Schmidt, reports Reuters.

It documents a situation in 2007 where an Apple employee was fielding a job offer that came from a Google employee. Jobs found out about it, e-mailed Eric Schmidt (who was still on Apple's board at the time) and told Schmidt to stop hiring away Apple employees.

Schmidt agreed and contacted the Google HR director.

The director told Schmidt he'd put an end to it and then he immediately fired the Google employee who told the Apple guy about the job. According to Reuters, the HR director added in the e-mail, "Please extend my apologies as appropriate to Steve Jobs."

Did the fired employee get an apology? Or the poor schmuck who was asked to come work for Google in the first place?

They may wind up with better than an apology, though, if the employees suing win their case.

Google and Apple are no longer best buddies -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs was furious about Android and promised to go "thermonuclear war" on it, according to his posthumous biography published late last year.