Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepping down from top roles
- by Randall Martin
- in IT&Software
- — Dec 4, 2019
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai is adding another responsibility to his job: Pichai will also be the CEO of parent holding company Alphabet going forward, taking the helm from co-founder and longtime CEO Larry Page.
With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it's the natural time to simplify our management structure. When the change occurred, Page and Brin took the positions of CEO and president at Alphabet, Inc, respectively, while Pichai took the reins at Google. He says he will continue to focus on Google while helping manage Alphabet's long term focus and future challenges.
Sundar Pichai will become chief executive of both Google and Alphabet.
John Hennessy, chairman of Alphabet's board, said it is "impossible to overstate Larry and Sergey's contributions over the past 21 years". It also named Pichai the CEO of Google.
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Both stopped making appearances at the weekly question-and-answer sessions with employees, and Page didn't attend this summer's Alphabet shareholders meeting even though he was still in the CEO role.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998 when they were Stanford students. Page and Brin, who founded Google in the 1990s, acted as co-CEOs of Alphabet. However, in a world where the notion of breaking up Big Tech is a hot topic, the consolidation of the leadership of such a massive company as Alphabet could be seen as a controversial move.
Pichai will have a new role as he faces up to claims from President Donald Trump of "bias" in internet search results, and the latest charge from Amnesty International that its business model leads to human rights violations by enabling surveillance of users. They intend to be "proud parents" from this point, "offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!"
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Mr Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford to start Google and doesn't have a business degree.
He grew up in MI, where his late father, Carl, was a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming.
The geeky impulses carried into his adulthood, leading him to once build an inkjet printer out of Legos.
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