Sheryl Sandberg, who was chief of staff to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers during President Clinton’s time and later became Google’s Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations 6 years back, has left the search giant to work for Facebook.
Sandberg, an alumna of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School, was named in the Fortune’s list of most powerful women for the year 2007.
Perhaps her immense influence stemmed from her controlling the main income strings, namely AdWords and AdSense, the latter considered as an offshoot of the former.
A high profile departure such as Sandberg’s from Google has inevitably led to speculations as to whether things are okay. The stock’s price has slipped considerably, and on March 4 almost touched the 52-week low (see the chart below).
This has never happened with the search giant, which is why the analysts fear that the internal dynamics is no longer comfortable for the early employees.
This is possible because the Google empire is constantly in flux, getting more and more acquisitions into its fold. JotSpot and GrandCentral are 2 of the latest.
Meanwhile, Sandberg’s departure is Facebook’s gain. From March 24 she will be the new COO there, managing sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, privacy and communications.
It remains to be seen how Facebook, the social networking giant, shapes up in the time ahead under Sandberg’s guidance.
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