Former Yahoo executive Brad
Garlinghouse will
join AOL and become the company's President of Internet and
Mobile Communications, and will also control the company's mail and
instant messaging products.
AOL is now under new management –
and will spin off from Time Warner in a few months – and new
hirings are helping fill the ranks.
Along with serving as a
Yahoo executive, who is best known for writing an internal memo that
slammed the company, most recently was a Silver Lake Partner senior
adviser.
The decision to leave Yahoo isn't entirely surprising
– the company continues to lose employees and executives – but
joining AOL may prove to be a risky move, analysts believe.
Garlinghouse will be responsible for helping a struggling brand turn
around, while also attempting to keep people using AOL Instant
Messenger and AOL Mail.
It will be interesting to see how
Garlinghouse plans to expand the reach of AOL's e-mail and IM
program, as the company faces internal issues that range from
layoffs, declining revenue, and corporate issues between AOL and Time
Warner.
Furthermore, the company has had an extremely
difficult time trying to keep up with the likes of Google, Microsoft,
Yahoo, Facebook, and other popular Internet destinations. AOL
CEO Tim Armstrong continues to recruit executives away from Yahoo,
Google and other companies, but some analysts are already calling it
a lost cause.
