There's an interesting theory making the rounds among some Silicon Valley insiders today.
Twitter is looking for a new CEO. Perhaps it made an offer to Sundar Pichai, who's been leading Google's core businesses since last October. To keep Pichai, Google decided to pull the trigger on an organizational change it's been considering for some time, giving Pichai the CEO title while keeping the same set of duties.
Pichai might not have been tempted - Twitter is a flaming mess right now, while being the number-two man at a far more powerful company like Google was a pretty good situation to be in. But being CEO is even better!
We reached out to a person close to Twitter to see whether this mgiht have made sense. This person couldn't confirm that the board had made an offer, but did tell us:
I've been hearing that too and I wouldn't be shocked if they want him as CEO. They tried to hire him once about 3 years ago and got very close. Google countered with a huge package to keep him there. I can't imagine him making the change after bring named CEO of Google today.
A lot of people have been discussing the theory on Twitter, too:
@rabois agreed. Good chance he was thinking of finally leaving to be CEO of Twitter. Keeping Android & YT with Sundar doesn't fit the story.
- Anil Dharni (@adharni) August 10, 2015
Current rumor of the day: Sundar Pichai got offered a CEO job -- probably Twitter -- and Google had to counter somehow
- Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) August 10, 2015
@rsarver 10 bucks they made this move to keep Sundar from being Twitter CEO
- (Chad)Rodriguez (@chadrodriguez) August 10, 2015
Imagine the Twitter Board approaching Sundar this past week with an offer to be the next Twitter CEO and Sundar like "I'll pass thank you"
- Alex Barredo (@somospostpc) August 10, 2015