Blake Irving is the American former Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of GoDaddy. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake worked for

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

where he helped develop

NetMeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows Vista). It uses the H.323 protocol for videoconferencing, and is interoperable w ...

MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger service and, in later versio ...

, and

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

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 Newbury Park High School, founded in 1967, is a co-educational public high school located in Newbury Park, California. Academics The school is one of two International Baccalaureate schools in Ventura County, the other being Rio Mesa High Schoo ...

in Southern California. Irving is a graduate of

San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...

and received an MBA degree from

Pepperdine University Pepperdine University () is a private research university affiliated with the Churches of Christ with its main campus in Los Angeles County, California. Pepperdine's main campus consists of 830 acres (340 ha) overlooking the Pacific Ocean and th ...

. 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 (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

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, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

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

Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from ...

, Xbox Live, 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 Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! ...

, and specific theme-based Yahoo! sites like news, sports, and finance.

GoDaddy

Irving became Chief Executive Officer of GoDaddy 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