Google Inc’s Neal Mohan is reportedly leaving the company for a job at Dropbox, where he will work as product head, according to Kara Swisher of Re/code. Previously, Mohan was offered a job at Twitter, but the search giant retained the executive by offering him $100 million. The rumors of Mohan joining Dropbox have been circulating for a while.
Key executives at Google
Neal Mohan is the second executive at Google to join Dropbox. Dennis Woodside, who worked as the head of Google’s Motorola Unit, left the search company last year to join Dropbox.
This is an exciting time for him to join the file storage company, which is looking to expand its enterprise business in a highly competitive industry, which includes Google, Amazon, Box, etc. Moreover, the company is also evaluating other funding options and is likely to organize a fundraising event soon. In Dropbox, Mohan is expected to take the place of Ilya Fushman, who recently joined Index Ventures as one of its partners.
However, it is worth noting that Mohan, who is an expert on ads, has chosen to move to Dropbox, which is among a few consumer companies that do not deal with ads. Lately, Google has somewhat witnessed an outflow of some of its talented employees. Along with Dennis Woodside, Rachel Whetstone, who worked as communications and policy head, left Google for a job at Uber. The commerce point person, Sameer Samat, also resigned from the search company and joined Jawbone. But the departure of Mohan is expected to hurt the company most.
Tons of quality experience
Mohan first worked as the SVP of strategy and product management at ad company DoubleClick, which Google acquired in 2008. The acquisition marked Mohan’s arrival at Google, where he worked as the VP of display advertising for several years. Working under the company’s veteran Susan Wojcicki, the executive has been instrumental to the company’s growth in the display advertising domain. Apparently, Mohan propelled DoubleClick to new heights and contributed significantly to the growing display advertising revenues of the company.
Moreover, he carried out a number of strategic acquisitions, such as Admeld, Teracent, and Invite Media, which supported the search giant in developing a robust ad product. Nat Turner, CEO of Invite Media, told BI last year that though “startups invented each little pocket of that whole thing, but Neal is the puppet master.”
