Motorola CEO Woodside Tipped To Exit To Dropbox As COO

This evening it would appear that Dennis Woodside isn't planning on sticking around Motorola long enough to see it be taken over by Lenovo. Word from the Wall Street Journal has it that Woodside will instead become the first Chief Operating Officer for Dropbox, the cloud storage group. Previous to being set in place as Motorola's CEO once Google began to run it, Woodside worked with Google for more than 10 years.

While the future leadership of Motorola is unknown at the moment – other than the bit that it'll be run by Lenovo's pick of leaders, that is – Woodside's role at Dropbox is a bit more clear. With the cloud storage company, Woodside will join the two heads of the business in a management role.

Chief Executive Drew Houston and co-founder and chief technology officer Arash Ferdowsi run Dropbox at the moment, but will be rolling with a lot more global operating experience with Woodside than they've had in the past. The company was very recently valued at a cool $10 billion not long after a financing round racking up another $350 million.

UPDATE: According to sources speaking with Rueters, Google's Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora will continue serving as Executive Chairman of Motorola's Operating Board. Former Google head of product management Jonathan Rosenberg is also said to be taking over (probably temporarily) as Motorola's Chief Operating Officer.

Woodside previously handled Google's advertising sales inside North and South America – here with Dropbox, he'll be leading the company into business software. It's unclear at the moment what Google plans to do to fill the CEO role for Woodside in the time between when Lenovo will take over and now, when they're still in regulatory talks about their sale of the Motorola brand.

Have a peek at the timeline below to find other recent chatter surrounding Motorola and Woodside over the past year. It's been a real ride for Woodside – and not the least bumpy ride he's been on yet, that's for certain.