14 DAY TRIAL // Google keeps on losing top-level executives, the third in less than a week, with Michael Rubenstein, who headed DoubleClick's ad exchange unit before the advertising network was acquired by Google in 2008, a position he continued to hold after the deal, leaving the search giant to, what else, “pursue another opportunity,” as Media Memo reports, though, there's no word on what exactly this other “opportunity” may be.
Michael Rubenstein was vice president and director of Google's Ad Exchange, a unit that still hasn't seen a widespread roll-out, despite being part of DoubleClick before the acquisition. The exchange would bring together ad sellers and buyers, similar to how a stock exchange works, allowing them to trade ad space. While it isn't live yet, those several industry players already using it on an invitation-only basis, it could potentially become big business for Google. Yahoo bought a company called Right Media for $680 million for a similar technology, so it's clear that the top players believe it is going to be big.
Rubenstein's departure follows that of DoubleClick's former CEO, David Rosenblatt, who left the company in April. Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008, hoping to do for display ads what it managed for text and search advertising, though, so far, things haven't gone completely according to plan. Google is apparently looking outside the company to replace him and hasn't filled the position so far.
Google has been seeing a growing stream of departures in the higher echelon, though, at its size, it can certainly afford it, at least for the time being. David Fischer, responsible for the AdSense and AdWords program, the company's biggest revenue earner, has announced that he will leave Google this month, though he will return to another position early next year. Google's Head of operations in China also left the company very recently to set up his own incubator/venture fund company.