Richard Gingras leaving Salon CEO post to lead news products at Google
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Richard Gingras, the chief executive officer of Salon Media Group, is leaving the online news magazine to head Google’s global news products, according to reports.
The move wasn’t much of a surprise given Gingras’ background as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley as well as having served a brief stint as an advisor to Google.
Gingras was hired as Salon’s CEO in May 2009. Before that, he was an advisor on ‘media product strategy to the executive team at Google from November 2007 through December 2008,’ according to Salon’s online bio of Gingras.
From June 2002 through July 2007 he was founder, CEO and chairman of Goodmail Systems, a now-defunct email provider which he stayed with as chairman with through October 2008, Salon said.
From September 2000 through June 2002, Gingras was ‘an advisor to various technology startups including Audiomill (merged into Real Networks, April 2002), technology incubator ChanceTechAV, web applications platform provider Laszlo Systems, custom book publisher MyPublisher, and broadband applications platform developer Sugar Media,’ his bio reads.
Now, Gingras is heading to Google, where he’ll attempt to combine his tech-saavy skills and experience in online publishing and news to push the Mountain View, Calif., firm’s news efforts further forward, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Gingras’ last day at Salon will reportedly be July 8.
While Gingras has a history of working in the tech field, he also has a long history with Salon ‘going back to its founding when he helped gather the seed money to start the Web site in 1995,’ the New York Times reported.
Officials and Salon and Google were unavailable for comment on Wednesday about the reports.
[Updated 3:02 p.m.: A Google spokesman said that he could confirm that Google has hired Gingras, but couldn’t offer any other details on Wednesday.
‘At this time, we’re not making an official statement,’ the spokesman said. ‘All I can say right now is we did hire him, Richard Gingras.’
The spokesman couldn’t confirm as to whether or not Gingras was hired to lead Google’s worldwide news products or to another position at the tech giant.]
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles