America Online Names CTO

America Online Inc. on Thursday named John McKinley as its chief technology officer.

McKinley will also serve as president of AOL Technologies. America Online is a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.

McKinley will handle the technology strategy for AOL's push into broadband, wireless, premium services, and other markets. In addition, he will oversee teams in charge of product engineering, network infrastructure and data centers, and internal business systems and computing.

Before joining AOL, McKinley was executive VP and head of global technology and services at Merrill Lynch. McKinley directed the planning and launch of Merrill Lynch's online trading offerings.

Before joining the financial services company in 1998, McKinley was senior VP and chief technology and information officer at GE Capital Corp.