Tim Armstrong (executive)
Timothy M. "Tim" Armstrong (born December 21, 1971) is an American business executive, who has been the CEO and Chairman of AOL Inc since 2009. A Connecticut College graduate in economics and sociology, Armstrong began a career in journalism, before capitalizing on the advertising potential of the Internet and going online. He became known for his online advertising sales in the 1990s, and was appointed as a marketing director for Seattle-based online entertainment-and-news portal Starwave, which was acquired by Disney in 1998. After a stint as vice-president of sales at New York-based news-and-gaming company Snowball in 2000, he was appointed as U.S. sales chief for Google, and became President of Google America's operation for many years. He replaced the outgoing Randy Falco as CEO of AOL on March 12, 2009.
At AOL, Armstrong has been instrumental in bringing about a marked change in the company, propelling them into a market leader in advertising with state-of-the-art technology, and shifting its focus towards digital journalism, at the benefit of local communities. Armstrong is one of cofounders of the local news website Patch Media, which now belongs to AOL. Armstrong's efforts to downsize the company and control costs and turn the company around has been dubbed as "Project Everest" by economic commentators. Under Armstrong, AOL has established Seed, a journalism and engineering system based on the concept that editors can make decisions on what to write about by compiling data and algorithms from leading search engines and websites, and acquired the digital media property The Huffington Post in 2011. In the 2010s, Armstrong has overseen a number of purchases of platforms for AOL, including the technology news portal TechCrunch, Gravity, Adapt.tv and Millennial Media. In May 2015, when Verizon Communications acquired AOL for $4.4 billion, Armstrong remained in his position as CEO.