Google CIO changes his tune, heads for EMI

by Juan Carlos Peréz

April 3, 2008 —

EMI Music has hired Google's Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill to be
president of its digital business division, the latest high-profile executive
to seek greener pastures away from the Googleplex.

However, it's hard to imagine that Google will have much trouble finding a
good replacement for Merrill, considering that it's a company crawling with
engineers, "a nerd's paradise" as a company official once called it.

In that sense, the loss of its CIO might be less painful for Google than, for
example, the recent defection of Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of
global online sales and operations, to Facebook, where she became chief operating
officer.

After all, Merrill was one among a very strong team of Google engineering vice
presidents, including Vint Cerf, Stuart Feldman, Vic Gundotra, Udi Manber and
Nelson Mattos, not to mention the company's top three executives -- Eric Schmidt,
Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- who are all computer scientists. In that sense,
Merrill's departure might have been felt more at a company that wasn't in the
IT industry and had a limited number of computer scientists and engineers on
its staff.

Still, Merrill's defection is definitely a public-relations blow for Google,
which in the past year had apparently made a conscious effort to build up its
CIO's public profile. Merrill spoke at industry events and granted one-on-one
interviews to IT and general-interest magazines, ultimately achieving a higher
level of recognition than the average CIO. This might explain why news of his
job change has resonated so strongly across the blogosphere and in the technology
press.

Certainly, the job of Google CIO is a big one and it remains to be seen if
Merrill's departure will result in any degradation or destabilization of the
IT services provided to employees, partners and customers, always a possibility
after a high-level change like this one.

By the same token, time will tell if Merrill made the right decision leaving
the Google environment, with its heavy emphasis on computer science and engineering,
to go to a music company. The music industry's aggressive approach to combat
Internet-enabled piracy via litigation has earned it the scorn of many Internet
and computer companies. Merrill's Ph.D. in psychology might come in handy as
he tries to instill a spirit of technology innovation in his new company.

EMI said Wednesday that Merrill's job will be to grow the record company's
digital music business, heading what the company calls in a news release "a
new global function" encompassing digital strategy, innovation, business
development, supply chain and global technology activities.

He starts at EMI on April 28, based at EMI Music's Los Angeles headquarters.

Merrill spent five years at Google. As CIO and a vice president of engineering,
he oversaw Google's global billing and revenue technology, along with internal
engineering and support. His projects included the launch in 2006 of the Google
Checkout online payment service.

"We thank him for all that he did at Google and wish him all the best
in his next chapter," Google spokesman Matt Furman said.

IDG News Service