The appointment comes after Adaire Fox-Martin’s move to become CEO and president of the €66bn Nasdaq-listed data centre firm Equinix
Ms Hartley succeeds Adaire Fox-Martin, who recently left to become CEO and president of the €66bn Nasdaq-listed data centre company Equinix.
Ms Hartley, a Google Ireland executive for 10 years, has been vice-president and leader of the EMEA sales teams since 2022 and has generally worked in EMEA-focused positions in the tech giant’s global business organisation and strategy teams.
Google employs more than 5,000 staff at its Dublin offices and data centres.
The news comes after a memo from Google’s global chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, said Dublin is to be designated as an expanded “hub” for Google as part of a restructuring of its global finance team. The memo said as the social-media platform reorganises its operations in response to AI, Ireland will be one of a small number of “growth hubs”, along with India and Mexico, to which jobs will be relocated.
Prior to Google, Ms Hartley was commercial director of GloHealth and group marketing director for Aviva Ireland.
“I’m delighted Vanessa is the new head of Google Ireland where she will oversee our thriving campus of more than 5,000 Googlers, two data centres and continued growing investment,” said Matt Brittin, president of Google EMEA. “Her experience will be invaluable as we continue to help Irish people, communities and businesses succeed and make the most of Al.”
Over the last year, Google has cut more than 10,000 jobs globally, with at least 200 of the redundancies in Ireland.
The cuts have been most prevalent in the engineering and hardware divisions, with sales positions also affected.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent firm, Alphabet, has said more job cuts are expected this year, as the tech giant adjusts to a repositioning of the industry around artificial intelligence.
“The tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform shift with Al,” Ms Porat said in her memo.
“As a company, this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers, but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions, including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas.”