Microsoft just lost an executive to its rival, Google. Hayete Gallot, who most recently served as Microsoft corporate vice president over commercial solution areas, will start a new role at Google Cloud as president of customer experience on April 1, 2025.
"I am honored to lead this newly formed organization and bring Google’s amazing innovation and AI leadership to customers around the world," said Gallot on LinkedIn. "More than ever, in this era of AI, customers are looking for help to go from idea to business impact quickly. I look forward to bringing together the incredible talent across strategic accounts, customer engineering, consulting, partner, solutions, industries, and learning - to accelerate our customers’ adoption of AI and all of our solutions."
According to CRN, Google will place the following Google Cloud business groups under Gallot:
- Strategic Customer Experiences
- Strategic Accounts
- Global Solutions & Industries
- Global Customer Engineering
- Global Partner Ecosystem & Channels
- Google Cloud Consulting & Learning Services
Gallot will report to Google Cloud President of Global Revenue Matt Renner.
As is often the case in sectors that require high levels of expertise and experience, the biggest names in tech often hop between companies. The list of people that could fill a role such as president of customer experience for Google is quite short. Gallot brings almost 16 years of experience to the role. Prior to working as Microsoft corporate vice president over commercial solution areas, Gallot was corporate vice president over work and security, vice president over modern workplace and Microsoft solutions, and chief of staff to the president of Microsoft global sales and marketing.
In this instance, Microsoft lost an experienced executive to Google, but just last week Microsoft poached three AI experts from Google's DeepMind. Marco Tagliasacchi, Zalán Borsos, and Matthias Minderer, who are founding members of Microsoft's new AI office in Zurich, Switzerland, are only the latest group of employees to make the jump from Google to Microsoft.
