Google CEO Larry Page Explains Why He's Reorganizing The Company
To make sure this happens, he has decided to take a step back to focus on "the bigger picture," while putting Sundar Pichai in charge of Google's core products, according to an internal memo first reported by Re/Code .
"As you age, even when you're still a teenager like Google, you have to work hard to stay innovative," Page wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal, which ran parts of the memo. "Innovation is messy, a disruptive process, and people tend to be more comfortable doing what they've always done with a few minor tweaks. … So I'm making … changes today to ensure we continue to strive for market-leading excellence and beyond in our existing already hugely successful products while also getting the next generation of big bets off the ground."
Pichai will now be the direct point of contact for the SVPs leading the search, maps, Google+, commerce and ads, and infrastructure teams, and he's already running Android, Chrome, and Google Apps. Those SVPs used to report directly to Page, but he writes that that system was "hard to scale." Larry considers Google a teenager so likely forsees even more product categories adding to that list.
"Our new approach is a more common corporate structure... Scalable, focused, and enables fast decision making," he writes.
Page will still run "business-centric" meetings that cover sales, partnerships, legal, finance, HR, government, or PR issues alongside Pichai.