New role, new markets

Some big news on the job front:

I wanted to share with you that as of April 1st I have transitioned from Google’s Strategic Partnerships group into a new role leading Google’s expansion across EMEA as our Head of New Markets.

I am very excited about the entrepreneurial nature of building out Google’s presence from scratch in over a dozen countries (or as “from scratch” as a $20B company allows), of leading a diverse and distributed team of country managers and account executives, and of the amazing upside in terms of revenue but also in terms of adoption of Google services and properties. This, combined with the ability to travel and do business across various emerging markets, made this an opportunity very attractive.

For the past 11 years I have had a job in which the primary focus has been the development, marketing or sales of mobile and wireless technology. I have seen the space mature from the days of WAP 1.1 to pure HTML 5, Blackberry going from a two way pager to the addictive e-mail business fixture it has become, Microsoft CE evolving into Windows Mobile, Palm being bought by USRobotics which became 3COM which became Palm, which became PalmONE, which became Palm and Apple finally getting rid of the Newton skeleton with the resounding success of the iPhone. As many of you can attest, I am passionate about mobile and, for the past 10 years, have been claiming that “this” was the year of mobile.

I do believe that 2008 was a transformational year in mobile as the iPhone, Android and mobile advertising all came of age. While this new role expands my scope across all of Google’s products, it will still allows me to continue evangelising mobile as wireless becomes a primary access point to Google across emerging markets.

As I return from my first trip to Croatia in my new capacity, I am amazed about the opportunity that lies ahead in these markets where users actively choose Google search, Maps and Youtube as their preferred properties, but where advertisers have yet to embrace digital marketing as a significant tool to reach the consumer.

Planned trips to Ukraine, Slovenia, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria are already in the works.