Surprise Shake-Up At Google Elevates Larry Page, A Co-Founder, To Top Post

Google Co-Founder Takes Over as Chief Executive

By MIGUEL HELFT

Published: January 20, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — Google said Thursday that Larry Page, its co-founder and president of products, would take over as chief executive, succeeding Eric E. Schmidt, the company's longtime chief.

Mr. Schmidt will remain executive chairman and serve as adviser to Mr. Page and Sergey Brin, the other company co-founder and its president of technology.

The shake-up, which will take effect April 4, is the biggest change in management at the company since Mr. Schmidt joined as chief executive in 2001.

"Larry, Sergey and I have been talking for a long time about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making — and over the holidays we decided now was the right moment to make some changes to the way we are structured," Mr. Schmidt wrote in a blog post.

Mr. Schmidt said Mr. Page would "merge Google's technology and business vision," while he would focus on external issues, like "deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships."

In the blog post, Mr. Schmidt said the three executives would continue to collaborate on major decisions, but that the changes would help clarify the individual roles so "there's clear responsibility and accountability at the top of the company."

On his Twitter account, Mr. Schmidt, who was widely described as "adult supervision" for the two young founders when he was named chief executive, wrote: "Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed."

The decision came as a shock to many in Silicon Valley. "Larry stepping up to be C.E.O. is really surprising," said Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineLand, an industry blog, who has followed Google since its founding. "Those guys hadn't really shown that they wanted to be C.E.O.," he said about Mr. Page and Mr. Brin.

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