Vaness Fox not a Googler Anymore

You can hear people all over the blogosphere typing as quickly as possible about the startling news Google Webmaster Central product manager Vanessa Fox dropped on her personal blog, Vanessa Fox Nude. Vanessa has been the face of Webmaster Central at search/webmaster conferences for the last couple of years and by all accounts she has been well receivced in that role. Now she is headed off to Zillow a real estate start up company.

What’s particularly interesting is one comment left on Vanessa’s blog read,

“Of course, you are going to get tired of hearing “You left Google VOLUNTARILY??!?!” but I am sure you’ll be up to the challenge.”

Google has long been hiring away some of the best and brightest from Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other technology companies but it’s rare to see someone from Google with a public profile get poached away. Google is certainly considered a good company to work for with perks such as free food at the plex, a percentage of your work time to tinker on personal pet projects and the chance to know other geeks are envious of you for working there. But the thing that has kept early Google employees (and high profile ones) from leaving has been stock options that are too attractive to walk away from. Vanessa is not an early Google employee and while she is high profile to the webmaster community she is not well known to the general public. Therefore it could be assumed that she does not have the same number of dollars (I meant reasons) to stay at Google.

Vanessa Fox will be missed if the number of farewell messages on her blog is any indication but Google Webmaster Central will undoubtedly carry on much as it has. There will be another “shiny, happy person” representing Webmaster Central at confrences and most won’t think much about it after a while. (Especially if, as Vanessa claims, she continues to come to conferences in her new role.) However, I think the real loss in Vanessa’s leaving is that she put a more human face to Google than many of the people webmasters typically see at PubCon or SES. Vanessa seemed to be more her own person and less a Google clone and I for one liked that about her. Afterall, what other Google employee has a blog with a word like nude in it? I wish Vanessa well in her new job and I hope Google will replace her with someone who seems as human.