David Lawee New Head Of Google Corporate Development

If you are looking to sell your company to Google, David Lawee is the guy to be stalking. Lawee, a source says, is the new Vice President of Corporate Development at Google, a spot that has been vacant since Salman Ullah, the previous VP, left (along with Sean Dempsey, also from Google corp dev) to form new venture fund Merus Capital.

Lawee, who started off in corporate development at Google but was most recently their VP Marketing, was a bit of a surprise choice, we hear. Many insiders expected Megan Smith, Googles VP New Business Development, to get the job. Both Smith and (now) Lawee report to SVP David Drummond.

Google’s corporate development group has been a bit of a revolving door over the last couple of years. In addition to Ullah and Dempsey’s departures, Chi-Hua Chien (now at Kleiner Perkins), David Friedberg (Weatherbill), Stephen Chau (now at Google Maps/Local), Jeff Donovan (retired) and Jeremy Wenokur have all left the group and or the company. There are just three people left in Google’s U.S. corp dev team (four now with Lawee), and another four or so abroad.

Part of the problem: Google’s corp dev team is, according to our source, hesitant to step on toes or pursue deals that won’t have internal corporate sponsors for integration. Only deals brought to them by others in the company can be pursued, and the corp dev team chafed at these restrictions. No word on whether things will change under Lawee.