AOL hires Microsoft's Alex Gounares as CTO

NEW YORK,USA: Web services company AOL Inc announced on Monday that a long-time Microsoft Corp. veteran Alexander Gounares would join the company this week as its chief technology officer and as a member of its global executive operating committee.

Gounares will lead all aspects of AOL’s technology strategy, platform development and external technology partnerships, as well as play a key leadership role in the overall strategy and direction of the company, AOL said in a press release.

He will report to chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong and will be based at AOL’s Dulles, Virginia campus, the company’s principle engineering and technology hub.

During his most recent stint, with Microsoft, he was a corporate vice president and chief technology officer for Microsoft's Online Services Division. During his tenure at Microsoft, spanning 17 years, Gounares led significant strategic and technical operations for some of the company’s most important projects including Microsoft’s global advertising platform, Bing search, MSN and Microsoft Virtual Earth.

He also served for three years as technology advisor to Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates, as well as corporate vice president of corporate strategy in Microsoft's Finance Department.

Welcoming Alex to AOL’s global leadership team, Tim Armstrong said he is a world-class technologist and has proven leadership experience in the development of global consumer and business platforms for the Internet.

“Alex brings deep experience in our strategy areas, as well as meaningful experience in strategy and corporate operations. We are looking forward to Alex joining the AOL team and ushering in the next phase of AOL’s technology platforms,” he added.

Gounares said this is an extraordinary opportunity to lead and cultivate the top-flight global team that is creating exciting new technologies to drive the platforms and products that AOL offers.

“Our goal together will be to harness the power of software to deliver on the enormous promise for AOL in its core areas of content, advertising and consumer applications. Tim has built on the historical strength of AOL and put together a fabulous leadership team and bold strategy for the future. I am excited to be part of the team and help lead AOL forward,” he said.

Gounares holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in Computer Science from Princeton University and is an inventor on more than 100 U.S. patents filed and pending.

Gounares will join AOL on May 13. He succeeds Ted Cahall, whose departure was announced previously.