Skift Take
Kudos to Google for bringing some diversity into the leadership of Google Travel. Left unanswered is whether the management modifications portend any strategic shifts.
Dennis Schaal
Richard Holden, who was general manager of Google Travel for the previous 3 years, and led its product management group for almost seven years before that, has actually been changed, Skift has found out.
“We’re incredibly grateful for Richard’s leadership of the Travel group over the past several years,” a Google representative stated. “Assisting people discover details and check out the world is core to our objective, and our new leaders Rose Yao [vice president of item management] and Julie Farago [senior director of software engineering] bring deep experience in this area.”
Yao previously was a product leader in Google’s Geo company, and Farago operated in item and engineering functions throughout Google and Verily for more than 15 years. Most recently, Farago had a crucial role in Google Travel’s hotel and trip rental search items, leading engineering.
Google decreased to say why Holden, who had been a high-profile figure at Google Travel for the past ten years, has been replaced. Efforts to get a comment from Holden were not successful.
Google claimed that Holden, who has actually been with the business for 21 years, has actually not left the business, however decreased to share extra information. His LinkedIn profile reveals his most recent position as ending in May 2023. His profile says he’s a vice president of item management in San Francisco.
Holden said in his LinkedIn profile that he “developed from the ground up the # 1 flight and accommodations search products globally– Google Flight Browse and Google Hotel Search.”
Holden had a crucial function at Google Flights even before Google’s 2011 acquisition of ITA Software application, which ended up being the structure for Google Flights.
Over the years under Holden’s management, Google Flights and Google Hotels, which are metasearch, or travel comparison platforms, became leading players in these sectors worldwide, taking market share from developed incumbents.
Google Travel– and in specific Google Flights– has had a rollercoaster year as Google laid off 6% of the company’s general staff in late January. The engineering team at Google Flights might have been chopped by 10-12%, consisting of lots of senior engineers, according to sources.
In his role, Holden promoted Google Travel at many industry conferences (see videos listed below).
It is early to say whether the management change portends any tactical shifts for Google’s travel vertical, its 2nd biggest.
Here are some of Holden’s look at Skift conferences in the last few years:
Richard Holden at Skift Global Forum 2022 in New York City
Richard Holden at Skift Global Forum in New York City in 2021
Richard Holden and Rob Torres at Skift Global Online Forum Asia in 2019 Richard Holden and Rob Torres at Skift Global Forum in New York City in 2018