• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 10, 2010

AOL on Monday named Alexander Gounares as its new chief technology officer, as well as a member of its global executive operating committee. Gounares comes directly from rival Microsoft, where he served as corporate VP of advertising research and development, and CTO for the company's online services division.

According to All Things Digital, Gounares's departure was announced internally at the software giant late last week. A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the matter.

Expected to join AOL later this week, Gounares will lead all aspects of the company's technology strategy, platform development and external technology partnerships.

Reporting directly to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Gounares is also expected to play a key leadership role in the overall strategy and direction of the company.

"Our goal," said Gounares, "will be to harness the power of software to deliver on the enormous promise for AOL in its core areas of content, advertising and consumer applications."

In his new role, Gounares will also oversee AOL's expansion of engineering centers and technology talent across the globe. Earlier this year, AOL enhanced the scale of its engineering capacities with the launch of the New York Technology Center, focused on engineering for AOL's content products and New York-based technology operations.

In addition, the company has engineering and product development hubs in Dulles, Virginia -- where Gounares will be based; Mountain View and San Francisco, California; Bangalore, India; Dublin, Ireland; and Tel Aviv, Israel. AOL's CIO and internal IT functions will also report into Gounares.

Gounares succeeds Ted Cahall, who left AOL in January. Reportedly caught off-guard by Cahall's decision, CEO Tim Armstrong said at the time: "Ted has decided to move back into the business side of technology and feels it's the right time to move on from AOL."

At Microsoft, Gounares led strategic and technical operations for various projects, including the company's global advertising platform, Bing search, MSN and Microsoft Virtual Earth.

He also served for three years as technology advisor to Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates, as well as corporate vice president of corporate strategy in Microsoft's finance department.