Google aims to recapture pioneer spirit
SAN FRANCISCO — When Google went public in 2004, the three men running the company promised each other they would remain a ruling triumvirate for at least 20 more years.
Although their commitment to work together until 2024 hasn’t changed, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are being reassigned in an attempt to recapture the freewheeling spirit of the company’s youth.
The surprise shake-up announced late Thursday will return Page, 37, to the CEO job he filled in Google’s early days. The move ends Schmidt’s decade-long reign in a position that also stamped him as the “adult supervisor” of a company that once seemed like a romper room filled with technological wunderkinds.
Schmidt, 55, will stay on as executive chairman. The new role turns him into Page’s consigliere as well as a liaison for Google’s business partners and government officials.
Brin, also 37, will be freed up to work on pet projects aimed at expanding Google’s empire.
The changes take effect April 4, leaving the current hierarchy intact through the current quarter.
Google can only hope the new pecking order pans out as well as the old chain of command has. The formula turned Google’s search engine into a moneymaking machine, with the latest reminder of the company’s prosperity coming Thursday with the announcement that it earned $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter — the most for any three-month period in its 12-year history.
Page started out as Google’s CEO when he and Brin started the business in a Silicon Valley garage and kept the top job until the venture capitalists backing the company insisted on bringing in a new leader.
That led to the 2001 hiring of Schmidt, a professorial engineer who was previously chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems and CEO of Novell, both much bigger than Google at the time. After initially resisting Google’s overtures, Schmidt bonded with Page and Brin to form a brain trust that proceeded to build the Internet’s main gateway and most powerful company.
Google now boasts a market value of more than $200 billion, a success story that has placed Page, Brin and Schmidt among the world’s wealthiest people. The three men are Google’s largest individual shareholders.
“My goal is to run Google at the pace and with the soul and passion of a startup,” Page said Thursday. “I think I will have time to do that given the way we have split up our responsibilities.”
Schmidt said it had started to become clear the company needed to be run more crisply.
“I am not as concerned about the titles as I am winning,” Schmidt said. “I am quite certain that this change will result in faster decision making and better value for the shareholders.”
Google shares rose $8.23, or 1.3 percent, to $635 in extended trading after Thursday’s announcement.
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