The cofounders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have just announced that they will be stepping down from their roles in Alphabet. The current CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, will now take over the mother company as well as the next CEO.
Both Sergey and Larry will remain shareholders and on the board of the company. Alphabet is the parent company of Google and was created in 2015. Google was founded back in 1998. Since the portfolio of Google has evolved tremendously over the years, the goal of Alphabet was to actually make the activities of the giant more “accountable” and cleaner.
However, just this Tuesday, the co-founders announced that they will be stepping down from Alphabet. Their reason? The following, as reported by BBC:
We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President.
The goal is to simplify the management structure of the giant. In a blog post, Sergey and Larry commented that there is not a better person to take over the role of CEO of Alphabet than Mr. Sundar Pichai, who is the current CEO of Google.
Pichai was born in India and came to the US and started his career at Google in 2004. Following the announcement, Mr. Pichai said that he is very excited and he is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the founders on the road to a “timeless mission, enduring values and culture of collaboration and exploration”.
While the co-founders of Google are stepping down, they will not be relinquishing their management duties. For example, they control majority voting rights of 51% on the board of Alphabet – a fact that will not change after them stepping down. One interesting fact is that, should they feel the need to do so, they can override any decision that Sundar Pichai makes.
The shares of Alphabet, upon the release of the announcement, have increased and are now up with 1.9%, the largest one-day gain since the end of October. The stepping down of the co-founders have not hindered the stock’s performance, just on the contrary – it has bolstered it.
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