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What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but don’t want your rivals to get their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if you’re Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and hope that no one notices.
Unfortunately, All Things Digital noticed:
[YouTube co-founder Steve] Chen left his spot as chief technology officer last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. “Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He’s still involved with YouTube and invested in its success,” says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email.
Still involved with YouTube–except his role of CTO doesn’t actually exist anymore!
The online video space is a tough market these days. While some companies are thriving, others aren’t fairing so well. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Chen’s not as important to YouTube–now that a whole army of engineers are at its disposal–but he could play a vital role at one of its competitors.
We’re seeing execs playing a lot of musical chairs these days, so it would make sense that Google would want to try and keep their top talent from defecting to a rival.
What do you think?
