Exclusive: Digg Steals A Google Exec As New VP Product

by Michael Arrington on Nov.30, 2009, under Gadgets, Tech News

Digg has poached Keval Desai away from Google as their new Vice President of Product, we’ve confirmed from the company. Desai’s last day at Google is today.

Desai is a long time Google employee, first joining the company in 2003. He’s currently their Director of Product Management and has led development of product/businesses in Google’s advertising business (including AdWords, Syndication & TV Ads).

He’ll be Digg’s first head of product, a responsibility that has been shared at various times by founder Kevin Rose, CEO Jay Adelson and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser. And he’s got a big job ahead of him: Digg is hard at work on releasing an entirely new version of the site.

Digg continues to build out a top exec team. In the last year they’ve brought in Thomas Shin and then Chas Edwards on the sales side. And new head designer Jeffrey Kalmikoff is hard at work building out Digg’s next user experience.

And the company has been fairly quiet, moving steadily towards profitability, says CEO Jay Adelson. They certainly needed that quiet time after all the acquisition hype around the company up until last year. The company will likely have revenues of around $15 million this year, we’ve heard.

As an aside, I’ve known Desai for a decade. We first worked together at Achex, a startup I cofounded in 1999 and that we sold in 2001. He is an intense, intelligent and highly capable executive. He’ll be a great fit at Digg.

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