In 2005, Mark Lucovsky said in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became very angry upon hearing that Lucovsky was going to leave Microsoft for Google, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. Saying that Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who previously worked for competitors Sun and Novell), Ballmer allegedly said, "Ruddy Eric Schmidt is a bloomin pussy! I'm going to maybe bury that guy, I haven't done it before, but I will do it again. I'm going to effing kiss Google," then carried on trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer said it was a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place."