Blake Irving is the American former Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet Domain name registry, domain registry, Domain name registrar, domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. GoDaddy is the world's fif ...

. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake Irving worked for

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

where he helped develop NetMeeting,

MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...

, and

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

Early life and education

Blake Irving was born on August 8, 1959, to James Scott Irving and Patricia Ann Irving in Ohio. Irving's father was in the FBI and consequently moved the family around the country. Irving lived with his brother, Scott, and his sisters, Lisa and Lori. Irving played the drums from the age of seven, and was an artist while attending the Newbury Park High School in Southern California. Irving is a graduate of

San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Diego, California, United States. Founded in 1897, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CS ...

and received an MBA degree from

Pepperdine University Pepperdine University () is a private university, private Christianity, Christian research university affiliated with the Churches of Christ, with its main campus in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Pepperdine's main campus consists ...

. He has served as a professor at Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business and Management, and has been named a distinguished alumnus.

Career

Xerox

Irving began working at

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

in 1981, where he provided Greek fonts for electronic typesetting. He eventually became a manager at the company's Font Support Center. Irving worked at PARC during the development of

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

technology, Irving also worked at Oki Electric Company and Compaq computer.

Microsoft

Irving was a product manager for Microsoft's telecommunications business unit in 1994, and a group manager the Personal Systems Division in 1995. In 1996, he was the group manager for the Internet Platform and Tools Division, and he would later be named Corporate Vice President. As head of the Windows Live Platform, Irving managed a $1 billion global R&D budget and oversaw development teams in the US, India, China and Europe. Irving was also Corporate Vice President of MSN Communication Services and Merchant Platforms. Irving was also a Member of Platform Group of MessageCast Inc. and was involved in overseeing other Microsoft products including NetMeeting, Outlook Express,

Xbox Live The Xbox network, formerly known and commonly referred to as Xbox Live, is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Gaming for the Xbox brand. It was first made available to the origina ...

, and other Microsoft applications.

Yahoo!

Irving worked at Yahoo! Inc. from May 2010 to April 1, 2012. He was the Chief Product Officer, and its Executive Vice President. Irving left Yahoo! during Scott Thompson's CEO-ship. While at Yahoo!, Irving was in charge of Yahoo! Mail, and specific theme-based Yahoo! sites like news, sports, and finance.

GoDaddy

Irving became Chief Executive Officer of

in January 2013. Under Irving, the company stopped airing sexually provocative commercials it had become known for, which had fed the company's reputation for sexism. Other changes by Irving including hiring Elissa Murphy as Chief Technical Officer. Irving said he would retire from the company at the end of 2017.

Autodesk

In March 2019, Autodesk appointed Blake Irving to Board of Directors effective March 22, 2019.

Other activities

Irving was an executive producer of '' Code: Debugging the Gender Gap'', a 2015 documentary about the lack of women and people of color in computer science.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irving, Blake GoDaddy Living people American computer businesspeople American Internet celebrities Businesspeople in information technology San Diego State University alumni Pepperdine University alumni 1959 births Pepperdine University faculty Microsoft people Xerox people Yahoo! people