More musical chairs: Facebook’s Benjamin Ling returns to Google

Venture Beat — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:29:17 -0400

Benjamin Ling, who we learned earlier this week is leaving the top marketing spot at Facebook’s developer platform, will reportedly return to his old company, Google. Valleywag first reported the rumor, and Kara Swisher’s sources confirmed with the exact job: Ling will be taking over monetization efforts at YouTube.

The musical chairs within Facebook, between Facebook and Google and between Facebook and other startups grows ever more complicated. The YouTube monetization job was recently vacated by Shashi Seth, who left to head revenue efforts at startup Cooliris. Google’s difficulties in making money from YouTube are well known, although chief executive Eric Schmidt said yesterday that it “doesn’t hurt our bottom line,” and that he’s pleased with YouTube’s continuing growth.

Ling left Google’s e-commerce team last fall.

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More musical chairs: Facebook’s Benjamin Ling returns to Google