EBay’s holiday ads use the tagline, “Whatever ‘it’ is,
you can get it here.”
For the Internet auction giant’s top corporate communications and government
relations executive, “it” is a challenging job at eBay’s newest subsidiary.
Henry Gomez has been named general manager of Skype North America, a new
division of the Luxembourg-based Voice over IP
Gomez will report to Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom and is responsible for all
strategy and business in North America, including marketing, public
relations, business development, product integration and government
relations.
“Skype is tremendously successful around the world, and we now plan to bring
greater focus to North America,” Zennstrom said in a statement. “Henry’s
deep knowledge of the market and its consumers, as well as his expertise in
building brands like eBay, makes him uniquely suited to lead our North
American business.”
Gomez, a Boston College graduate, joined San Jose, Calif.-based eBay five
years ago after heading the media relations departments at Home Box Office
and NYNEX (now Verizon Communications ).
Gomez is the third senior eBay executive to join Skype.
Alex Kazim, formerly
senior vice president of new ventures, heads several new business areas at
Skype. And Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s CFO, will become president of Skype
worldwide after his successor is named.
“The opportunity to share talent was a big reason why Niklas and I agreed to
the acquisition,” Meg Whitman, eBay president and CEO, said in a statement.
“It’s going to be exciting to watch Alex, Henry and Rajiv work together with
Skype’s already strong team.”
Gomez and company have an interesting challenge ahead of them at Skype North
America.
Skype has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories
using its free software, but most of its explosive growth has taken place in
Europe and Asia.
Beyond its free PC-to-PC calling service, voicemail, instant messaging, call
forwarding and conference calling, Skype offers a paid calling service,
called Skype-out, that connects PC callers to traditional landlines and
mobile phones.
