George’s LinkedIn profile now lists him as “retired” with one of the nerdiest farewell messages ever: a long post in binary code that translates to, “Retired from Amazon after ~20 years. Loved every minute. Not checking out, just changing the game :-)”
George will be replaced as the Echo and Alexa chief by Tom Taylor, a senior vice president who has been running the Amazon Payments and Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) businesses. George also ran the Amazon Appstore, but that part of the business has been shifted to Amazon’s Devices & Services organization, under senior vice president Dave Limp.
GeekWire learned of the changes via a tip this evening and was able to confirm them independently. Amazon isn’t commenting publicly on the news, and George hasn’t responded yet to a request for comment on his departure.
George joined Amazon in 1998, serving in a variety of roles ranging from General Manager of Seller Platform Integration to vice president of Global Payments Services, and later Vice President of Apps, Games and Cloud Drive, among many other roles. He has led Alexa and Echo since January 2016.
