Google co-founders step down from parent company as Pichai takes over

Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are stepping down from their positions at the parent company Alphabet, leaving Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, to manage both Alphabet and Google under one role. The Guardian reported.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was created through corporate restructuring in October 2015 to manage ventures outside its main search businesses, known in the company as “other bets”. Page was Alphabet’s CEO, while Brin was its president.

Alphabet has since become “well established”, Page and Brin wrote in a blogpost announcing the change. The executives wrote that it was time for the companies to “simplify management structure”.

“We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company,” they said in the post. “And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a president.”

Pichai has been leading Google for more than four years. The company has nearly doubled its headcount since he took over, growing from 59,000 employees to 114,000.

Alphabet had been positioning Pichai as the de facto leader for quite some time, making him the top executive voice at shareholder meetings, on earnings call and as a spokesman at congressional hearings.

Page and Brin had stopped making appearances at weekly question-and-answer sessions with employees, and Page did not attend this summer’s Alphabet shareholder meeting.

Page and Brin started Google in Silicon Valley in 1998. They promised to stay involved as board members and shareholders. They still hold more than 50% of Alphabet voting shares.

“Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost,” they said.

Alphabet stock was up 0.5% in after-hours trading.