The longtime chief executive and co-founder of Pinterest Inc., Ben Silbermann stepped down today as the company revs up its efforts in the e-commerce business.

Bill Ready, who was recently the boss of Google’s commerce business, will take over from Silbermann. Ready had been at Google just three years, and before that was the vice president and chief operating officer of PayPal. Silbermann won’t completely leave the company but will instead move into the less harried position of executive chairman while keeping his seat on the board.

“In our next chapter, we are focused on helping Pinners buy, try and act on all the great ideas they see,” Silbermann said in a statement. “Bill is a great leader for this transition. He is a builder who deeply understands commerce and payments.”

Silbermann told the Wall Street Journal that the platform is ready to “make money” and make it “quickly.” Pinterest might seem to some investors like an opportunity not fully taken advantage of. It has hundreds of millions of users but so far hasn’t generated a whole lot of cash.

Going forward, the image-sharing platform will be more of a marketplace or, as some call it, the internet’s “shopping mall.” Rather than users just getting ideas from Pinterest, the platform could make deals with companies and facilitate the shopping experience. Ready is probably a good choice of CEO in this regard.

“In the next phase of our journey, we will help people engage more deeply with all the inspiring products and services they find on our platform so they can build their best lives,” he said in a LinkedIn post after the move was announced. “As someone who has spent most of my career in commerce and payments, it’s so clear to me that Pinterest has the opportunity to build something unique — something special.”

Silbermann was recently accused of discrimination toward women and people of color, so a new CEO right now is probably a good idea for more than one reason.

Photo: charlesdeluvio/Unsplash