Almost buried too deep in Google’s earnings release yestreday was word of a pretty big management shift: Nikesh Arora, the company’s Chief Business Officer, is leaving after a decade with the company. He will be taking a role at SoftBank as their Vice Chairman, and as CEO of their SoftBank Internet and Media subsidiary.
Omid Kordestani, who has been an adviser to Larry Page since stepping down from his role as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales in 2009, will take over Nikesh’s role for the time being.
Larry Page commented on the news on his Google+ page:
After almost ten years, Nikesh Arora our Chief Business Officer, has decided to leave Google to join one of our partners, SoftBank, as Vice Chairman of SoftBank Corp. and CEO of SoftBank Internet and Media. I remember first meeting him at the British Museum, which for some reason Sergey had decided would be a good interview location. Nikesh has been a tremendous leader, adviser and mentor to many Googlers — including me. We have learned a lot together, and had a lot of fun along the way.
Omid Kordestani, who was our business founder and led our sales teams for many years, will be stepping in to lead our business organization for now. When we hired Omid we had no business people so we had all the engineers interview him around a ping pong table. I think he survived because he is actually an engineer! Omid has always been one of my closest advisors, especially since I became CEO again in 2011. He personifies the entrepreneurial spirit that is so important to Google. There is nothing Omid doesn’t know about Google, our customers and partners, and I know that under his leadership the team will excel.
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