Are Googlers becoming AOLers?

by Elias Shams
Either AOL offers hell of a compensation package to their executives or their new CEO, Tim Armstrong must be hell of a guy. Since Armstorng departure from Google over a year ago, many more Google’s executive have been following him from West to East including:

. Jeff Reynar, their new head of technology for engineering and products.
. David Eun, their new Content Chief
. Jeff Levick , their new head of Global Advertising and Strategy
. Erin Clift,their newly-created role of senior VP-global sales development

And many more.

All these incoming resulted a few outgoing including:

. Departure of AOL’s  CTO, Ted Cahall
. Departure of Chris Nicotra, their former senior vice president of Advertising Technology and CTO and CIO of their Baltimore-based Advertising.com unit who took on a CTO position with ComScore.

Not quite sure yet, but all these might be good for AOL. Looks like Mr. Armstrong meant it when he said he wanted to re-brand AOL as a content company last year. He is seriously looking to ramp up AOL’s technology innovation. He just coughed up $200,000 for a three-year MIT media lab sponsorship this week. The Media Lab is a research community supported by more than 60 sponsors focuses on the study, invention, and creative use of digital technologies. Way to go Armstrong! Actually, not sure the credit goes to Armstrong or Reynar who will also be responsible for coordinating the collaboration for the company with Media Lab research teams on projects to explore and develop advances in areas that can help transform the way people interact with digital technologies.  Reynar is also building out and managing AOL’s New York Technology Center and is focused on innovation for AOL’s content business.

The sponsorship, was spearheaded by AOL Ventures, a division established by AOL in 2009 to nurture early-stage, externally developed opportunities and employee-originated ideas. AOL will have the opportunity to collaborate on the Media Lab’s groundbreaking research, including rights to license work developed at the Media Lab during its sponsorship. With the $200,000 sponsorship, AOL has access to all of the research conducted at the Lab; Lab-wide visiting privileges; open invitations to Lab-wide lectures and special events; and most importantly, non-exclusive, license-fee-free, royalty-free licensing rights for IP that’s developed within the lab.

Given the new direction, Mr. Armstrong has envisioned for AOL as a content company, and how both AOL and the Media Lab have each pioneered significant advances in the way have been communicating and consuming information in a digital environment, I think this is great collaboration and significant step for AOL. Media Lab has some fairly innovative projects coming out of its program. So, indeed good for AOL:

Think about it. For the $200,000, not only AOL gets the sponsor label and access, but particularly, “the non-exclusive, license-fee-free, royalty-free licensing rights for IP that’s developed within the lab”. Sounds very cheap to me. That’s roughly the same as a typical single software engineer salary over the course of three years. What’s the catch I wonder? Maybe, because it’s not exclusive and the only real tangible benefit is “royalty-free”? However, the standard MIT software license is royalty free anyway. Still, for the cost of a single software engineer, it still seems very worthwhile.

I wonder a) if any of our local universities in DC area doing similar programs? I will look into it and will blog it b) why did AOL need to wait for all ex-Google guys to come along and take such initiative?