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 To head up AOL LLC's Internet and mobile communications, CEO Tim Armstrong is tapping Brad Garlinghouse, previously a Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) executive best known for authoring a frank critique of his former employer that got leaked to the media.Garlinghouse joins AOL as president of Internet and mobile communications. "Brad is an 'all star' Internet executive," Armstrong told The New York Times. Garlinghouse made some headlines back in 2006, when his "peanut butter manifesto" became public. In the memo, he said AOL was spreading itself too thin, likening its strategy to peanut butter on toast. After Garlinghouse left Yahoo! in 2008, he served as a senior adviser to private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. In his new job, he'll have a chance to hone his investment skills further. As the leader of AOL's expanding Silicon Valley operations, he will head up the recently created investment unit, AOL Ventures. In an interview with GigaOm, Garlinghouse pointed out that with the growing popularity of services such as Twitter and Facebook, the entire communications arena is ripe for disruption. AOL has an opportunity to capitalize on that disruption. The company is going to either partner with or acquire startups in order to make over its communications business and capitalize on this disruption, he said. If Yahoo! is peanut butter, what is AOL? "I'm going to work on that," Garlinghouse told paidContent.org. "I don't know my answer to that yet.I've been there not even 10 minutes. Some of the challenges I articulated, which (new Yahoo CEO) Carol Bartz has been proactive in trying to address, I feel like I see already a kindred spirit in the leadership that Tim has brought to bear on AOL in his first 100 days." - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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The following statement is incorrect:
Garlinghouse made some headlines back in 2006, when his "peanut butter manifesto" became public. In the memo, he said AOL was spreading itself too thin, likening its strategy to peanut butter on toast.
It should say "Yahoo was spreading itself too thin", not "AOL was spreading itself too thin"