Bill Coughran

My original plan was to be an academic. After I got my PhD in computer science, I went to Bell Labs. At the time, Bell Labs was quite academic. Some of the work I was involved with—core modeling and computer systems work—shaped my thinking about how to build large-scale systems and designs for many years, and it's something that served me well at Google. Because there I had the opportunity to work with some of the most sophisticated systems at that time.

After my time at Bell Labs, I co-founded Entrisphere in late 2000. That company was acquired by Ericsson after I left. I joined Google in 2003. The toughest challenge at Google was managing such a wide variety of special technologists, and then a broad scope of research and development groups. What I bring, maybe, is intellectual breadth and pragmatic organizational psychology, coupled with a lot of operational experience. I've certainly overseen a wide range of technologies, from semiconductors up to large distributed systems, search, security, and other web and mobile services.