Google’s doing amazingly well, so any sort of “abandoning a burning ship” metaphor is way off base.  Still, a lot of employees are leaving the search giant, and the latest to do so is a man named Dominic Preuss.

Preuss isn’t quite as prominent as some of the other departing people; as the product manager for local advertising, he may, for example, be less missed than a key AdSense developer or the vice president of corporate development.  Still, it’s a good bet that Google didn’t want to lose him to Meetup.

Meetup describes itself as the “world’s largest community of local Meetups, clubs and groups.”  Preuss will begin there as the vice president of marketplace.  And in the event that you’re getting even slightly lost in all of this jargon, Peter Kafka interpreted the move.

“In English, that means Dominic is going to try to create a new revenue stream for Meetup by matching sponsors with Meetups, and taking a small cut for itself,” he wrote.  “Smart idea: Right now Meetup sponsorships (Wilson Sonsoni and DFJ Gotham sponsor NY Tech, for example) are done ad hoc, and Meetup doesn’t see a penny of this revenue.”

Given his background at Google, Preuss should definitely know a thing or two about making money.  Hopefully that’ll serve him well at his new job.

Tags: Google, Meetup