Nearly 10 months after announcing CFO George Reyes' retirement, Google today tabbed a president of operations at telco Bell Canada as his replacement.

Patrick Pichette will begin his position as senior vice president and CFO Aug. 1. I don't know anything about Pichette and know little more about Bell Canada, but I love that Google picked a telco guy as the CFO.

With 20 years of financial ops and management in telcos, now Google has a telco expert to tap as it continues to navigate the shark-infested waters of Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

This is particularly important for the search vendor, which is looking to hang its hat on mobile online advertising through its Android mobile operating stack while striking complicated relationships with others (hello, Sprint-Clearwire) playing in the space.

Pichette spent the last seven years at Bell Canada. Before that, he was a partner at McKinsey & Co., where he was a lead member of McKinsey's North American Telecom Practice.

He also served in the mid-'90s as vice president and CFO of Call-Net Enterprises, a Canadian telecommunications company.

Pichette will be overseeing Google's insanely big, $17 billion-plus ad business, which it will try to boost on the mobile front as Android phones launch heading into 2009. So, no pressure. :)

Good luck, Patrick.

As of 4:45 EDT, Google shares were trading up $7 to $551 on the news.