Yahoo lures Google whiz in key role
YAHOO chief executive Marissa Mayer has lured away one of Google’s top advertising executives to help engineer a turnaround at Yahoo.
Henrique de Castro is leaving Google to become Yahoo’s chief operating officer early next year.
The defection announced yesterday is Ms Mayer’s highest-profile hiring since she left Google to run Yahoo three months ago.
Since then, Ms Mayer has brought in a new chief financial officer and chief marketing officer without raiding the ranks of her former employer.
Yahoo Inc has been struggling to attract more advertising for several years, a problem that Ms Mayer evidently thinks she can fix with the expertise of an executive who helped build Google Inc into the internet’s most lucrative marketing network.
Through the first half of this year, Google’s ad revenue totalled nearly $US21 billion ($20.57 billion), a 22 per cent increase from 2011, while Yahoo generated $US2 billion, unchanged from 2011.
Mr de Castro, 47, has played a key role in Google’s success since leaving Dell Inc in 2006.
He is a vice-president who runs a division that manages Google’s relationships with advertisers.
Yahoo is giving him a compensation package valued about $US58 million, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.