She was a rising star at Intel. Is she headed back for the vacant CEO job?

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

July 3, 2018

3 Min Read
Google Cloud COO Diane Bryant Exits After 7 Months

Maybe she didn't like the company cafeteria? Diane Bryant, a former rising star at Intel who decamped to become Google Cloud's COO seven months ago, is once again taking her red stapler and heading out the door.

Bryant joined Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Cloud in December, after spending 32 years at Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), most recently heading its data center group, which booked $17 billion in revenue in 2016 -- 29% of Intel's total sales, second only to the Client Computing Group, which includes PC processors. (See Intel's Diane Bryant Jumps Over to Google Cloud.)

"We can confirm that Diane Bryant is no longer with Google," the company said in an email statement. "We are grateful for the contributions she made while at Google and we wish her the best in her next pursuit."

Bryant was number two at Google Cloud, reporting to CEO Diane Greene. Her presence at Google was a big deal in helping the company gain enterprise cred, as it strives for more cloud market share from its position a distant third behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

Figure 1: Diane Bryant, ex-Intel, ex-Google Diane Bryant, ex-Intel, ex-Google

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With Intel CEO Brian Krzanich abruptly resigning last month, and Bryant suddenly available for work, that makes us go "hmmmm…" (See Intel CEO Resigns After Employee Relationship Revealed.)

As for why she left Google, Business Insider, which first reported Bryant's Google departure Wednesday, cites "a person familiar with the situation" who says Bryant's role wasn't clearly defined and she had few people reporting to her at first. "This person said that Google's management was excited to hire her and that the feeling was that it would figure out how best to use her later." But Bryant "struggled to become involved," at least at first.

Bryant was briefly rumored as a replacement for Greene in late December, but that never came to anything. (See Will Google Replace Cloud Boss Diane Greene?)

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About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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