South African national Luke McKend, who has worked at Google in London for several years, is the company’s new SA country manager. Google announced his appointment on Thursday, concluding a search that lasted for nearly six months.

McKend, who will join Google SA on 1 November, replaces Stephen Newton, who resigned from Google in April to join mobile advertising specialist InMobi.

Originally from SA, Luke has been with Google since 2006, working as an industry head in Google’s London office. In the UK he was responsible for managing a wide variety of businesses across the classified, property, restaurant, education, dating and job sectors.

Prior to joining Google, Mckend was the commercial director of a start-up technology company called iGrasp.

According to a Google statement, McKend also worked with “some of the UK’s largest brands, defining their approach to digital media while he was at TMP Worldwide, one of the UK’s largest recruitment advertising firms at the time”.

He finished his schooling at Fish Hoek High, and went on to complete his university education at Stellenbosch. He will be returning to SA with his partner and 5 year old daughter. — Staff reporter, TechCentral