Brad Garlinghouse, AOL's President of Commerce and Applications and the head of its Silicon Valley office, is quitting.
A source familiar with the situation says that Garlinghouse was frustrated that AOL has been reduced to playing defense and is not paying attention to some of the great product work his team was doing out on the West Coast, particularly its mobile products.
Basically, he thinks that AOL has become an arm of the Huffington Post's media empire, this person told us.
Garlinghouse's last tweet (eight days ago) was a quote from Steve Jobs via the Walter Isaacson biography: "When sales guys run the company, product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off."
Mike Arrington tweeted a few minutes ago that he'd heard some "very bad news" about AOL and this apparently was it.
AOL hasn't said anything yet.
Garlinghouse joined AOL in 2009, and previously worked at Yahoo overseeing products like Mail.
Update: Garlinghouse confirmed his departure in an email to the LA Times.
