Google has lost a trio of bigwigs in less than a month.

In mid-March, US sales boss Tim Armstrong departed for AOL. Earlier this week, Latin America director Gonzalo Alonso jumped ship for Argentine IT services company Globant. And now, the company has parted ways with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, president for Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations. Cassidy left the Mountain View Chocolate factory to become "CEO-in-residence" at Accel Partners, the venture capital firm known for backing such big online names as Facebook and Baidu.

"The timing was very coincidental and there was no talk internally about me taking Tim’s job," she said. "The reality is that I was always pretty clear in my ambition and desire to one day take the step of running my own company and pretty transparent in talking with Google about that."

Cassidy entered the Chocolate Factory in 2003, becoming the first general manager of Google Local and Google Maps. Before that, she worked for an online banking startup known as Yodlee, which was funded by Accel.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussed the matter by way of canned PR speak. "We are deeply grateful to Sukhinder for all that she has done for Google since she joined in 2003," Google's Willy Wonka said. "She’s an ambitious, entrepreneurial executive who has a proven track record of building successful operations - most notably, developing Google’s advertising sales teams across Asia Pacific and Latin America. We wish her only the best as she pursues her passion to lead and run her own company." ®

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