By John Paczkowski
Rob Glaser is stepping down as longtime CEO of RealNetworks, the company he founded in 1994. Sources say the move was instigated by his own board, but that he cooperated with the decision and was involved in the transition. Glaser will remain chairman of the Seattle-based company, but will be replaced as CEO by Robert Kimball, who most recently served as general counsel and executive vice president of corporate development at Real. Read More »
Published on January 13, 2010
By Kara Swisher
While AOL denied a report last week suggesting that CTO Ted Cahall is leaving, he actually is, um, leaving. Oops! Perhaps to defocus from the CTO-is-not-leaving-oh-yes-he-is snafu, AOL also announced the acquisition of StudioNow, a video creation and distribution platform, as well as the opening of a new tech center in New York, helmed by Jeff Reynar. Read More »
Published on January 25, 2010
Leo Apotheker has resigned as CEO of SAP AG after the German software company’s supervisory board declined to renew his contract. SAP offered no reason for the departure, insisting it was by "mutual consent," though this hardly seems the case given the fate of Apotheker’s contract.
Former Google sales boss Tim Armstrong has brought a slew of former colleagues with him to AOL, but this may be his highest-profile hire so far: Dave Eun, who has been in charge of content deals at Google and YouTube, will replace Bill Wilson, one of the last high-profile AOL guys from the pre-Armstrong era.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz was the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to put up his own blog. Late Wednesday night, he became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to step down from that position via Twitter.
High-level Microsoft departures are becoming a regular event. Last month, Windows senior VP Bill Veghte said he was leaving the company after 20 years. This month, it’s Mike Nash, corporate VP for Windows Platform Strategy, who has tendered his resignation.
It will be like they never left the Googleplex in Silicon Valley if this Washington, D.C., invasion of execs from the search giant keeps up.
The fourth new geek in town is Sumit Agarwal, who was head of Google's mobile product management and has become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
It's interesting to see so many key appointments in the tech arena going to one company, especially one so immersed now in national and international policy issues.
Longtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig is stepping down as president and CEO of the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard to take a new job as CEO of Chegg, the top online textbook rental start-up.
The move is unexpected given that the former Yahoo COO landed the job running the top gaming franchise in March of last year.
If Sun CEO Jon Schwartz’s recent all-hands memo to employees had all the sentimentality of a farewell letter, it’s likely because he’s preparing to leave the company. Sources close to Sun tell me Schwartz will soon resign as CEO, leaving the company in the hands of new owner Oracle and its very profit-minded leadership.
The 5,000-plus layoffs Ericsson announced in 2009 evidently didn’t pare the company’s costs as much as the company hoped. Ericsson said Monday that it plans to sack another 1,500 employees this year as it steels itself to compete in a tough market.
Rob Glaser called BoomTown when he landed in Washington, D.C., only a few hours after he announced Wednesday he was stepping down as longtime CEO of RealNetworks...Although execs come and go in various and sundry ways--you simply have to give Glaser credit for his pioneering work in bringing both audio and video to the Web.
That was quick: Shashi Seth, the "product guy" and former Google executive hired by AOL just three months ago, is leaving the company and headed to Yahoo. AOL, of course, has been a net importer of Google veterans since bringing sales boss Tim Armstrong aboard to run the company last spring.
Add another name to the list of former Apple employees resurfacing at Palm and its chief backer, Elevation Partners. Avie Tevanian, who once served as Apple’s chief software technology officer, has joined Elevation as a managing director.
Best Buy said this morning that it is "streamlining Napster’s executive structure"--corporate parlance for sacking the faltering music service’s leadership, which has had a tough time finding a winning business model in a digital music world dominated by Apple’s iTunes Store. CEO Chris Gorog and President Brad Duea are both leaving Napster, which was acquired by the big-box retailer a little over a year ago.
Yahoo appears to have made a significant new hire, installing Raymond Stern as SVP of North America partnerships and business development.
Stern has had stints as CEO at Presto Services and SVP of strategy and CMO at Intuit.
Stern's new job at Yahoo seems to be slightly broader than the person he is replacing, Jim Schinella, who was SVP for corporate partnerships.
Fred Davis, the well-known entertainment and digital media lawyer, will join CBS Interactive head Quincy Smith at a new banking and advisory firm in Silicon Valley, according to several sources.
Along with Davis, sources added, Smith is collecting a high-profile group of advisers to the still-unnamed firm, including Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, former Netscape CFO Peter Currie, and David Golden, EVP of former AOL CEO Steve Case's Revolution LLC.
David Ko, head of Yahoo's mobile division, has added the Internet giant's vast media properties in the U.S. to his portfolio, according to several sources.
With purview over programming and more for the main Yahoo media properties, such as News and Finance, he will now control a vast swath of its consumer-facing products.
But, in a related move, product development for mobile has moved from under Ko to CTO and EVP of Products Ari Balogh.
Greg Nelson, who has had the thankless job of running MSN for Microsoft, has left that position and been given the even more thankless task of running the integration of the complex search and online advertising partnership struck by the software giant and Yahoo.
Nelson's counterpart at Yahoo, according to sources, will be Mark Morrissey, who is currently SVP of Products at the Internet giant.
The pair--pictured above, with Morrissey on left, Nelson on right--will have their hands full in what will ultimately be a two-year effort.
BoomTown's title for the relationship: A Couple of White Geek Guys Sitting Around Arguing!
Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ.
But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation's capital--Amber Allman of 463 Communications.
With a spate of regulatory issues coming up around its pending search and online advertising deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will need all the help it can get.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is making the most substantive changes in her exec ranks since she did a massive restructuring of its staff in late February, according to sources close to the situation.
"She is continuing to clean the place up," said one top exec about the moves, which are likely to be announced internally tomorrow.
Will these changes also extend to Yahoo's board?
Given its recent string of lousy financial reports, its weak platform strategy and declining share of the the global handset market, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Sony Ericsson began sacking employees again. And it did just that this morning, announcing plans to shutter its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina, as well as offices in Miami, India and Sweden.
Essentially--although AOL is located in New York and not California--it's going to be like tremors before the Big One at the online company today as about 100 employees are set to be laid off by management.
It is part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's "Project Everest"--the code name for cost-cutting across the company. After this small cut, there could be a call for voluntary departures, followed by a much more drastic layoff.
The action comes in the same timeframe as the online site's spinoff from Time Warner.
Reporting a second-quarter loss that widened thanks to a weak videogame market, Electronic Arts today said it will cut 1,500 jobs by early next year as part of a restructuring effort aimed at trimming at least $100 million in costs. This after announcing plans this morning to acquire social network game maker Playfish for $400 million.
An ugly Monday for Sprint Nextel employees. The company plans to eliminate 2,000 to 2,500 positions in the fourth quarter as part of its effort to reduce labor costs by at least $350 million.
The Seattle area is going to get another jobless jolt today, with RealNetworks planning to lay off four percent of its workforce, sources said.
That's a small number--just about 70 people out of its 1,700-person staff--but the move comes on the heels of layoffs of another 800 employees at nearby Microsoft yesterday.
The reasons for the layoffs at RealNetworks are, as was the case at Microsoft, to realign the workforce after the recent economic downturn and to control costs.
Tony Conrad, CEO and co-founder of Sphere--the contextually relevant content engine AOL bought in the spring of 2008 for upward of $25 million--left the Time Warner online unit last month, several sources have told BoomTown in recent weeks.
But, in an effort by AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, Conrad has agreed to become "Special Advisor" to its AOL Ventures Unit.
Apparently, he is also mulling a new start-up and remains a VC too.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes kicked off his quarterly earnings call by explaining why the company is cutting hundreds of jobs in its Time Inc. magazine unit.
But if you're impatient, you can simply look at this grim chart, which details the publisher's Q3 performance
Who’s been poached, promoted or pushed out? Arrivals & Departures tracks tech and media industry moves.
[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]
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