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AOL fired Chief Technology Officer Maureen Govern, according the Wall Street Journal. The paper's source says the bumbling company was responding to the outcry against its records-releasing fiasco, in which millions of user search records were released to the public.

This is, of course, the second time this year that AOL has fired employees for a high-profile fuck-up; the last victim was the customer service rep who wouldn't let user Vincent Ferrari cancel his account.

Of course, in the Ferrari case, AOL was hypocritically punishing an employee for following the company's standard "user retention" procedure. In this case, they're totally valida— oh, wait, AOL's official policy is to let the government peek at its search records anyway. NEVER MIND.

AOL Fires Technology Chief After Web-Search Data Scandal [WSJ via GMSV]