Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has found a new COO for Uber who will be his right hand man. Barney Harford has been named the chief operating officer for Uber. He will now be the second monst powerful person at the ride-hailing service, according to Bloomberg.
Harford, as Uber COO, will be responsible for the company’s global ride-hailing operations, customer service, marketing, and Uber Eats. He will also oversee Uber’s regional managers: Europe’s Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Asia’s Andrew Macdonald, and North America’s Rachel Holt. Harford has been service as advisor to Khosrowshahi since he was named Uber’s CEO.
What’s interesting here is that Harford is also Khosrowshahi’s former rival. THe two competed against each other for over a decade when Harford was CEO of Orbitz and Khosrowshahi was CEO of Expedia. Harford was working under Khosrowshahi when he took over as CEO at Expedia and then left in 2009 to become CEO at Orbitz. Expedia later acquired Orbitz in 2015 for $1.6 billion.
“Dara and I were both super competitive,” Harford told Bloomberg. “Through all that we remained good friends. That’s just business. That’s just competition. We compete aggressively but we compete in the right way.” Khosrowshahi also tweeted out the announcement.
