Google loses UK managing director

Kate Burns was Google's first employee outside the US

Google's managing director for the UK, Benelux and Ireland has quit the company to take a break from her career. 

Kate Burns became famous back in 2001 when she became Google's first employee outside the US. She is leaving the company to spend more time with her family.

Burns was originally employed to head up the Google UK sales office, before being made managing director of advertising sales in the UK.

Before joining Google she was pan-European sales director at AltaVista and had also worked in the ad sales divisions at Yahoo and DoubleClick.