Microblogging site Twitter has announced the appointment of Google’s Chief Business Officer, Mr. Omid Kordestani, as the company’s new executive chairman. Mr. Kordestani has been with Google almost since the inception of the company, and was reportedly employee number 11 at the tech giant. Announcing the appointment via Twitter, the co-founder and new CEO of the social networking site, Mr. Jack Dorsey, heaped lavish praise on the former Googler, who, according to the CEO, is a “great” addition to the Twitter team. This is what Mr. Dorsey had to say on his official Twitter account: “Today we’re appointing @OmidKordestani to the Twitter Board of Directors to serve as our Executive Chairman! A great chairperson is the first step towards continuing to make our Board one of the best in the world, and purpose-built to serve Twitter”.
An official spokesperson for Google meanwhile, gave credit to Mr. Kordestani for helping Google with its business through the years he had been with the company. Wishing him luck in his future endeavors, the spokesperson said, “We’re excited for Omid and very happy for Twitter. Omid was instrumental in establishing Google’s business and helped us develop really close, longstanding partnerships across the industry. We wish him every success in the years ahead”. It bears mentioning here that it was only late last year, when he officially came back to the Google fold after having left the company in 2009 to get into semi-retirement, whereby he did help out Messres Page and Brin in an advisory role, but didn’t have anything directly to do with the day-to-day running of the company.
All that changed when the then Chief Business Officer at Google, Mr. Nikesh Arora, left for Softbank late last year, and Mr. Kordestani took back the job he had once done for the company during its formative years. But with Google recently undertaking a massive restructuring exercise, he was left without an official designation. As part of its recent restructuring, Google created a parent company for itself called Alphabet Inc. and spun off all its non-profitable, smaller businesses and wacky new ideas as separate companies different from its core internet assets like search and YouTube along with of course, Android. Twitter itself has undergone a fairly extensive reorganization in recent times, with co-founder Mr. Jack Dorsey coming back to take over the reins of the company as its CEO from former chief executive, Mr. Dick Costolo, who has since, stepped down from the company’s board. Reports emerging yesterday also seemed to suggest that the company will lay off as much as eight percent of its entire workforce fairly soon.