Google CEO Larry Page has appointed his key employee Sundar Pichai to lead the company's important products such as search, maps, advertising and more.
Google, the world's largest internet search company, is going through a change in the company's top level management. Friday, citing an internet note, Google CEO Larry Page has appointed Sundar Pichai, the head of Chrome and Android, as the lead for company's core products and services. Pichai's new role will impose great responsibilities on the Indian-born executive, which were previously handled by Page, as reported by Re/Code.
Under the new leadership role, Pichai will directly undertake products such as search, maps, Google+, commerce, advertising and infrastructure in addition to his existing role as a head of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, sources familiar with the change said of the change on Friday. Additionally, six executives, including heads of research, social media and search, who previously reported directly to Page will now report to Pichai, the exclusive report added.
While Page will be free of all major responsibilities, sources said the company's chief will now focus on the "bigger picture." But the company's major operations, including the Nest, Calico, Google X, corporate development, legal, finance and business, will be directly run by Page.
Re/Code also highlighted no management changes in the company's YouTube division, which will still be under the experienced eyes of Susan Wojcicki. After all, she is one of Google's top veteran managers and a part of Google since the time it was first started out in her garage.
As for Pichai, the promotion is certainly a weight to his resume, which puts him at the front-running race for the succeeding CEO. But Pichai's promotion adds to a string of series of top-level management changes at Google this year. Pichai's responsibilities grew with the departure of Google Apps head Dave Girouard in March 2012 and Android chief Andy Rubin in March 2013. Other high-level departures include Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora in July, Vic Gundotra, the head of Google's social networking services, in April and Google X director and Glass Head Babak Parviz.
