Google acquires a lot of companies, big and small, and the question has been raised as to whether its size might be undermining future deals. Could the sheer mass of the company, so often indicative of the hyper-corporate structure that quickly drowns out the original vision of company founders, be the reason why some companies have turned Google down recently? One of the best places to look for this is Google’s acquired staff members.
It was in November of 2009 that Google acquired AdMob, but Tech Crunch’s report tells us that few of the original AdMob employees still remain. The rumors of a rough transition started when the company’s CEO, Omar Hamoui, quit after working under Google for just five months. Since that time, a variety of employees, from ground-level to C-level, have left to join smaller companies.
Just the other day, on January 4th, Tony Nethercutt decided to take his leave as well. Nethercutt has a deeply ingrained history with AdMob, having worked as their first ad executive, long prior to its acquisition by Google. As one of the few remaining AdMob veterans and a prominent Google executive, his shift to the position of General Manager for the ad firm Mojiva comes as something of a surprise. Might it be due to issues with how Google has directly acquired companies?
Marissa Mayer, who is in charge of acquisitions for any local products (which covers companies associated with everything from Maps to Hotpot and more) stated in an interview that Google actively works to give acquired companies as much autonomy as possible, while expanding their resources. It could be that AdMob’s staff leaving is due to completely unrelated reasons, or that it’s bulk “I quit” tendency is merely exaggerated by happenstance. Of course, it could also be that what Google reps say in interviews isn’t identical to what’s actually happening in the field.
