AOL, under new management and with a spinoff IPO on the horizon, continues to fill out its executive ranks.
The newest hire: former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse will join AOL as President of Internet and Mobile Communications. Garlinghouse will report directly to CEO Tim Armstrong.
Garlinghouse will take control of AOL’s mail and instant messaging products. He’ll also head AOL’s Silicon Valley operations in Mountain View and serve as west coast lead for AOL Ventures. Bebo, acquired by AOL in early 2008, is now part of AOL Ventures.
Garlinghouse was most recently an advisor to Silver Lake Partners. Prior to that he spent nearly six years at Yahoo in a variety of executive roles. His last role at Yahoo was SVP Communications and Communities. His team grew Yahoo Mail to the no. 1 mail provider during his tenure, from no. 3 when he arrived at Yahoo.
AOL SVP David Liu was also strongly considered as a candidate for the position, we’ve heard from multiple sources.
Nice work, Brad!
this will only work if brad or brod have an eagle eye for “entrepreneurial talent.” mergers, acquistions, and innovation is the only thing that will save aol. this is definitely an exciting addition to the aol venture team. hope he picks a winner.
That won’t help make a difference with AOL. He would have been better off if he had joined either LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter (or even my next project Welated.com or Laatie.com).
AOL as a brand has lost its mojo. The only difference would be if AOL changes its name and brand to something else other than AOL, and completely revamp its business model and focus.
Even having an email address @aol.com seems so old and if you do have an @aol.com email address, may likely cause you not having anyone taking you seriously, because that’s so century ago, it’s like carrying around and listening to a walk-man while everyone else is listening to an iPod, plus nothing new and good has been coming out of AOL as a company lately.
The solution is; change the name, bring in new management (get rid of all the old ones), and rebrand and refocus the business model, but keep the AIM solutions, that’s the only way out for AOL.
i don’t think i agree. AOL is in a much better place than Yahoo in my opinion. At least AOL has a plan.
and that would be ?
Arrington, you have your man in AOL now. I can’t wait for the leaks to start flowing.
whoever is responsible for Yahoo Mail should have been fired ages ago.
and Yahoo Mail is #1? not according to this:
http://www.tech...ebmail-product/
And look where AOL mail is…
i never liked the peanut butter guy. anyone who could call for the firing of hundreds of workers while Yahoo Mail was…Yahoo Mail, just seemed unseemly to me.
and how well did all those acquisitions pan out? first he engineers the buy of the company he got fired from — dialpad — while his former employees go on to build grandcentral, which gets acquired by google, and is about to take over the phone space as Google Voice. then peanut butter guy buys a couple of junky email firms (oddpost, zimbra) that are going to give gmail a run for its money. uh huh.
and what of this vaunted Yahoo Mail?
“There was a point when getting a Yahoo.com email address was cool. Now it bears the prestige and excitement of lunch at McDonald’s.”
Brad Garlinghouse — n. — @see failing upwards.
The Oddpost buy was timely due to the introduction of gmail, but the execution was a major FAIL. The two years it took to roll out the “new” Yahoo Mail, Yahoo! could’ve easily built it themselves.
Zimbra however was a major cluster f**k. It was a total waste of money. Whoever made that decision to buy Zimbra was a moron.
How about who decided to acquire Broadcast.com from Mark? $5+ billion is a lot of change without ever doing anything with it. Or may be I can say that, Broadcast.com is the most expensive domain name acquisition, ever.
But are we talking about Brad and AOL or Yahoo!?
I guess Yahoo is changing organization after the new CEO came in. They definitely needed new, aggressive and shrewd people at Yahoo like current CEO Bartz. Yahoo is still functioning as the #2 most visited website in the world. I’m glad Bartz is shaking things up at yahoo and discontinuing yahoo briefcase and such that don’t make any money or sense and get back to business.
Congrats !! Brad .. let c .. wat change we can see in the AOL mail and BeBo
I know it may seem vindictive, but I love it when companies like AOL go by the way side. AOL was charging BY THE MINUTE when they were the only real game in town… when the public got more options, they didn’t forget that and many quickly moved on.
Same thing with the TELCOS… up until about ten years ago they were your end-all-be-all for communications… people went in droves to add a second line to their house for the interwebs. And it cost a fortune and all the extra features cost more and they played the game like they would never become obsolete… oops, but wait… it’s happening.
Companies like AOL deserve to die a slow and horrible death if for no other reason than the attitude and approach they took when they were the giants in the industry.
will be interesting to see what becomes of the whole “AOL West Coast” part of this deal.
Hope him to have a better future.