A Google mystery: The names and bios of the company's top execs are no longer listed on its website
The names of the company's top executives, their headshots, their bios, or any other information that shows who's who inside the various Alphabet subsidiary companies have vanished from the company's website. And it looks like it's been that way for a few months now.
There's an old photo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the company overview page, but it doesn't list their current titles (Page is the CEO of Alphabet), referring to the pair simply as the founders of Google who met at Stanford back in 1995.
It's unusual for a major public company not to post such basic information online, and Google is the only company of its ilk that doesn't display its senior management - Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple all list their execs publicly.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the management bio page is undergoing a redesign.
But there's no word on when the redesigned page will go up. And the previous management page appears to have been taken offline several months ago, based on searches for cached versions of the page kept by the internet archive.
Transparency
If you needed to know who oversees financial maters for parent company Alphabet (Ruth Porat), or know who the CEO of the core Google internet business is (Sundar Pichai), or if you wanted to get a sense of who is leading businesses like smart home appliance maker Nest, the company's investor relations page won't be of much help.
Right now, the company's management page just takes you to an Error 404 page:
Google and Alphabet have long been criticized by investors for a lack of transparency about the business - the company still does not disclose financial information about key products, such as YouTube and Android. And Google angered Wall Street for a period of several years by eliminating the customary annual briefings with analysts and investors.
When CFO Ruth Porat joined Google in September 2015, she promised that the company would become more transparent. Soon after being hired, she created 15-30 minutes "office hours" for analysts and investors.
Improving investor transparency was also part of the reason Google reorganized as Alphabet last year. The shake-up happened with the idea that it would allow all of its businesses to operate more effectively and efficiently, a move the company was said to be considering for four years.
It's not clear why Google decided to take its executive page offline, or when it'll be back up. But after a mini exodus of some of Google's top talent in the past few months, it may look a lot different when it's back online.