Salon CEO Quits to Lead Google News Products

For the past few years, Google has been flirting with news, either by expanding its Google News product but also through several other tools designed for news publishers, partly because of the tension between the company and old school publications. But it's been lacking focus, something that may change now that it's bringing in Richard Gingras, the soon-to-be former CEO of Salon.

Gingras has announced that he is leaving the website he's been running for the past few years and that he'll be working for Google. The Mountain View company has also confirmed that he is joining, but has not said anything else.

Salon is a forerunner in online magazines and essentially invented the segment in 1995. However, it's been unable to become profitable, not for lack of trying.

It was looking for a buyer until recently, but talks have cooled down apparently. The sale of the Huffington Post to AOL and the merger of the Daily Beast with Newsweek only served to highlight Salon's failure to either start making money or get a fair price for its acquisition.

Gingras will be leaving July 8 and will start working with Google on July 11. Some reports indicated that he will be running Google News, but later it became apparent that he will have a bigger role as head of anything related to news at Google. He has already been advising the Google News team for the past few years, so the transition will be an easy one.

He said he has been in talks with Google for several months and the company eventually made him a worthwhile offer. While he has been Salon's CEO only for the past two years, he has been involved with the company from the get-go in one form or another.