The senior Google executive poached by EMI's new owners to overhaul its global digital strategy said yesterday that file sharing, for so long deemed the scourge of the music business, was "not necessarily bad".

Glen Merrill was Google's chief information officer and one of the architects of the internet firm's successful flotation in 2004. He has been appointed at EMI to a new role overseeing all of the company's digital strategy, innovation, business development, supply chain and global technology activities.

Since the rise of Napster, the music industry has blamed file sharing and peer-to-peer networks for the continuing slump in CD sales. With digital sales failing to bridge the gap, it is desperately searching for a new business model.

But Merrill told the Guardian that Guy Hands, the Terra Firma chief executive who bought EMI last year, was "open to trying new models".

"There is academic research that shows file sharing is a good thing for artists and not necessarily bad," said Merrill. "We should do a bunch of experiments to find out what the business model is."

Previously, the music industry has rubbished studies that claim file sharing can have a positive effect on music sales. "I think people will pay," Merrill said. "There is evidence that people we think are not buying music are buying music. They're just not buying it in formats we can measure."

He also criticised the approach of the major labels in pursuing individual file sharers through the courts. "It's a poor business model to sue your customers. I don't think that's a sustainable strategy."

Hands has promised to overhaul the record label, home to Coldplay and Gorillaz, by slashing 2,000 jobs and the number of acts on its roster, finding new ways of making music pay and restructuring the business. But his high-profile restructure sparked a backlash from current and former artists including Robbie Williams and Radiohead.

Merrill plans to experiment with ad-supported music download services, pointing to Google's success with targeted advertising, and subscription models.