Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have announced that they will be stepping down from their various roles at parent company, Alphabet.
This will see Google CEO Sundar Pichai take over from Larry Page as CEO of parent company, Alphabet, two years after being appointed to the board. While Sergey Brin’s position as President of Alphabet will be removed.
This brings an end to Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s 21 years stint in active management at Google/Alphabet while they continue to work in their capacity as shareholders, and co-founders.
“While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!”
Page and Brin wrote in a blog post.
Formed in 2015, Alphabet came into existence after a corporate restructuring of Google, becoming the parent company of Google and over a dozen other subsidiaries including, Waymo (self-driving cars), Verily (life sciences), Calico (biotech R&D), Sidewalk Labs (urban innovation) and Loon (rural internet access via balloon). This saw the then CEO of Google, Larry Page, become the CEO of Alphabet with Sundar Pichai coming on as CEO for Google.
According to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, “Alphabet and Google no longer needs two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet.” This will mean that Sundar Pichai will assume his new position as a leader of the larger company while retaining his role at Google as CEO.
This will see him become the “executive responsible and accountable for leading Google, and managing Alphabet’s investment” in other portfolio and ventures.
“There is no one that we have relied on more since Alphabet was founded, and no better person to lead Google and Alphabet into the future.”
Larry and Brin.
Pichai has spent 15 years at Google, leading product development and engineering across all of Google’s services before rising to the position of the CEO. He was also appointed to Alphabet’s board in 2017.