Senior Executive Leaving Google

SAN FRANCISCO — Douglas Merrill, a vice president of engineering at Google, is leaving the Internet search company to become a president of digital at EMI Music, the recorded music division of EMI Group, according to an executive briefed on his move.

Mr. Merrill is the second senior executive to leave Google in two months. In March, Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president for global sales and operations, left to become chief operating officer at Facebook.

Their departures, as well as those of several high-profile engineers and senior managers in recent months, are heightening concerns that as the company grows in size and its stock swoons, it risks losing a larger number of important employees.

“It is very difficult to preserve the same kind of culture and energy that Google had as a startup,” said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor’s. “It is increasingly difficult for Google to be able to keep all the great people it has hired over the years. These people have a wide variety of great options at their disposal and a number of those people are seizing them.”