Facebook hires Google vet as COO

Facebook Inc. said today it hired Google Inc. veteran Sheryl Sandberg to serve as its chief operating officer, a coup in its drive to turn the popular social networking site into a major moneymaker.

As Google’s vice president for global online sales and operations, Sandberg, 38, ran the Internet giant’s lucrative advertising arm, which generates 99% of its revenue and employs thousands of people around the world. Facebook has been searching for the best way to manage its rapid growth and generate advertising revenue without alienating its 66 million users.

Competition between the Internet players – the two hottest in Silicon Valley – has escalated as they scuffle over top talent. In July, Palo Alto-based Facebook hired Gideon Yu, the former chief financial officer of Google-owned YouTube Inc.

As momentum shifts to Facebook, the 500-employee company has shown it has the cachet and muscle to win these skirmishes. It scooped up a $15 billion valuation in October with a $240 million investment from Microsoft Corp. Microsoft beat out Google for the tiny stake in Facebook.

The defection helped continue the recent punishment of Google’s stock, which was trading at $447.01, down about 2%, this afternoon.

Sandberg’s hiring follows last month’s announcement that Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief revenue officer and former chief operating officer, would leave to pursue a chief executive role at another company.

Sandberg said that she and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 23, met and hit it off at Silicon Valley financier Dan Rosensweig’s Christmas party. Their talks intensified at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at a series of dinners at Sandberg’s Atherton home. Her mentor and Facebook investor, private equity investor Roger McNamee, encouraged the match after Sandberg asked for his advice about a different job offer she was weighing.

The executive, whose Google holdings have made her a multimillionaire, said she was drawn to Facebook by the opportunity to again tap into the power of the Internet to change how people communicate. She said she also felt a deep connection to Zuckerberg’s vision.

“Facebook represents one of the most exciting opportunities there could be, if not the most exciting opportunity,” Sandberg said.

Sandberg will manage sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, privacy and communications. She will report directly to Zuckerberg.

“Sheryl is a great manager who will help scale Facebook’s operations globally,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “She has relevant experience and a track record of scaling business operations and building new kinds of advertising networks. Sheryl understands Facebook’s goal of connecting everyone in the world and is passionate about building a business that will enable us to realize this mission.”

Sandberg, who joined Google as one of its first few hundred employees in November 2001, helped build and ran the company’s online sales and operations. She also helped spearhead Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org.

She is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent women executives, with a powerhouse resume that includes stints as chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department, a management consultant for McKinsey & Co. and an economist at the World Bank. Sandberg, a mother of two, is married to David Goldberg, a former Yahoo Inc. vice president who ran its music business. He left Yahoo last year to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.

Facebook is betting it will benefit from Sandberg’s political and business acuity. The company’s nascent attempts to generate money by exploiting the social connections between friends have been met with some criticism.

Sandberg said she decided to leave Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., to seek a new challenge and to recapture some of that start-up excitement she experienced in the Internet giant’s early days.

“I was going toward something, not from something,” she said.

Sandberg will be replaced at Google by her longtime No. 2, David Fischer, vice president for online sales and operations.

“Sheryl was a valued member of the Google team and we wish her well in her new endeavors,” Omid Kordestani, Google’s senior vice president of global sales and business development, said in a statement. “We have a deep management bench at Google and are delighted that David Fischer, who has been such an important part of the growth of this worldwide organization, will assume responsibility for Google’s global online sales and operations.”

Sandberg, who worked with Fischer at the Treasury Department, said she was leaving her team in good hands.

“David is a tremendous leader and manager,” she said. “This will be a seamless transition for Google.”

jessica.guynn@latimes.com