Sunnyvale, California — Well, that was pretty quick. Barely two weeks after Yahoo announced that Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of products Ari Balogh, who earlier this month said would be leaving for “personal reasons,” the company quickly nabbed Microsoft old-timer “Blake Irving” as replacement for Balogh, Yahoo said Monday.
Irving, the long-time Windows Live executive at Microsoft, but left the company in 2007, shortly before a major reorganization of Microsoft’s online operations, as he said then, spend time with his family, has landed a gig at Yahoo.
In a release, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz mentions “Irving brings to Yahoo genuine large scale Internet expertise from a mature company known for world-class technology,” as driving his hiring and says his focus will include “speeding key inputs and decision making into product strategy and direction,” Bartz stated.
Yahoo has been courting Irving to join the company. In his new job, Irving has been engaged to create a new strategy and direction for Yahoo’s global portfolio of products.
Irving delivers his own accolades to Yahoo in a blog post here. From his post, which was mostly the yodeling of Yahoo marketingese:
“This week marks an exciting new journey for me personally, and I’m thrilled to be sharing my experiences and background with the world class people at Yahoo! We have big opportunities, as well as big challenges ahead of us, and I’m getting ready to dive in and work with this great team to make Yahoo! even more central to daily online life than it has been over the past decade and a half.”
Irving’s first day in the office will be May 17 and he will report directly to CEO Carol Bartz, he is appointed to replace Ari Balogh, who has been chief technology officer and executive vice president of products for the past two years. According to Yahoo, Balogh is leaving his position for personal reasons but will stay until June 3 to help with the transition.
“I look forward to joining the smartest team at Yahoo to bring fore more unique and highly personal experiences to Yahoo consumers, deliver on the company’s promise of science, art and scale to Yahoo advertisers, and develop the amazing talent at the company so we may continue to deliver more and faster innovations to the market,” Irving said in a statement.
Irving has worked for Microsoft for 15 years, finishing up as corporate vice president for the Windows Live Platform group. He contributed in developing Internet-based video conferencing, business collaboration, e-mail, blogging, instant messaging and VoIP for Microsoft. He has most recently worked as a professor at Pepperdine University. So he should be skilled at communicating ideas and teaching others, and also have some interesting insights into Yahoo’s new partner.
Related to the hiring, Yahoo Labs Chief Scientist Prabhakar Raghavan will receive a push to his status. He will now report directly to Bartz. Raghavan, who joined the company in 2005, heads Yahoo Labs where he handles research into text and Web mining and algorithm design.
The speed at which Yahoo has filled Balogh’s position provides a contrast to how it has handled some of its other senior executive vacancies. This development does not come as a big surprise; when news of Balogh’s decision to quit first broke, the rumor mill already had Irving assuming Balogh’s CPO role. Still, this hire looks to represent a significant win for Yahoo.