
Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet - minimaxir
https://blog.google/inside-google/alphabet/letter-from-larry-and-sergey
======
footpath
[https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1203/](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1203/)

Slightly more organized info in the intro bullets.

 _Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the CEO and President, respectively, of
Alphabet, have decided to leave these roles. They will continue their
involvement as co-founders, shareholders and members of Alphabet’s Board of
Directors._

~~~
endorphone
In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing.
The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were
going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or
their management coupled with Google.

But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google
guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

~~~
Mikeb85
It's not an admission of failure. Two businessmen created one of the most
successful, influencial businesses ever and are passing the torch. They're
rich AF and probably want to retire.

~~~
fjrufjfjfu
I don't know man. Doesn't that sound a little bit suspicious? If you were to
create Google why would you just peace out? Look at Bill Gates. He still wants
to do things but the google founders are all MIA. How do guys like that just
lose all ambition and disappear?

~~~
kouh
A similar question was at the center of Atlas Shrugged

~~~
jacquesm
That's not exactly a standard work on business management advice.

------
lifeisstillgood
Weirdly this feels like a non-issue. Google has not felt like it has a
"personality" for some time - maybe it's a function of hitting mega-corporate
size, but it also feels a bit like when Microsoft (a Computer on every
Desktop) essentially achieved its goal, it then spent a decade in "goalless
and soulless exploitation" mode - something that one suspects is the next step
for the worlds largest personality-free platform.

If the two of them leave (have fun sipping pina coladas on the beach!) I am
not sure (from the outside) what difference will be made. This may sound like
great corporate succession planning - but I feel without a goal there will be
little to stop business plans that boil down to "squeeze every dollar from
everyone everywhere"

(Was there a glimmer of light in "unbiased free information to all" \- is that
a mission for the new decade?)

Edit: Just to emphasise - I hope they have fun spending their billions.

~~~
TaupeRanger
What makes you think they're retiring to sit on their asses all day and "spend
their billions"? Maybe they have new and interesting things to do.

~~~
netwanderer3
They recently acquired Fitbit so I expect we should see some brand new product
developments within that category soon enough in the future. I do feel they
have not participated as much within the IoT market which still has so much
potential unrealized. Perhaps the market is not ripe yet without 5G
availability? It's incredible that we have all these new AI and ML tools and
still they don't really have a lot of meaningful impacts yet in improving our
daily lives if we really think about it. The main opportunities still remain
mostly unexplored.

~~~
tsimionescu
I wouldn't expect to see a new kind of product coming out of Google. They have
0 track-record of product innovation. Their main innovation power is in the
back-end, on the implementation side.

Internet search existed before Google, but they came up with a newer and much
better way of implementing it. Internet email existed before Gmail, but they
vastly improved the offering. The iPhone already existed, but they came up
with an alternative in Android. Same story repeats with GSuite, Chrome, Chrome
OS.

YouTube was sort of new, but it was an acquisition, so I don't know if it
counts.

When they do have ideas for innovative products, they fail to deliver.

~~~
drusepth
Waymo is a new kind of product coming out of Google, as was Chromecast, as is
the so-far-successful Stadia. I'm there there are others, but those are a few
I can think of off the top of my head that are delivering very well for the
technical challenge they pose.

~~~
tsimionescu
Waymo is so far unproven, but you're right, it may turn up to be a successful
product.

I forgot about the Chromecast, that's a good point.

Stadia is close to being new, though there have been similar efforts for some
time now. However, it is by no means successful so far, most reviews I have
seen from the gaming press have seen it as impressive, but ultimately not a
great way of playing games, and Microsoft's offering is likely to quickly
outshine it by sheer force of games catalog.

------
claudeganon
Seems like “interesting“ timing given that the Alphabet board just recently
stated they’re investigating the handling of sexual misconduct by executives:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/technology/google-
sexual-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/technology/google-sexual-
harassment-lawsuits.html)

And relatedly:

> Charlie Ayers: Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting his
> fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company
> in the masseuse room. He got around.

Heather Cairns: And we didn’t have locks, so you can’t help it if you walk in
on people if there’s no lock. Remember, we’re a bunch of twentysomethings
except for me—ancient at 35, so there’s some hormones and they’re raging.

Charlie Ayers: H.R. told me that Sergey’s response to it was, “Why not?
They’re my employees.” But you don’t have employees for fucking! That’s not
what the job is.

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-
exc...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-excerpt-
google)

~~~
lonelappde
That's years old news.

~~~
claudeganon
The investigation of executives to fend off shareholder lawsuits is less than
a month old...

~~~
coachtrotz
The investigation is supposed to wrap up early this month.

------
beaner
One thing I really like about Larry Page is that it's obvious he never really
wanted to be a manager. He's a real nerd at heart who likes technology. But he
also realized the value of what he created and acted as a good steward for 20
years. He took the reigns when he needed to, and let others take over when the
time was right. He's still one of the people I look up to most.

~~~
smt88
> _He took the reigns when he needed to_

I strongly disagree. Alphabet is an unfocused company which seems to treat
product releases as experiments that can be killed at any time without
warning. There's a culture that incentivizes more experiments rather than
better products.

The aimlessness is obvious in the frequent and baffling product renaming,
reorganizations (like Nest joining Google), duplicated/overlapping products,
and killing of acquired products.

A smart CEO knows how to focus, build on early success (rather than abandon),
and tell a coherent brand story.

~~~
m0zg
One of the first initiatives Larry undertook when he became a CEO is to "put
more wood behind fewer arrows" by canceling a ton of bullshit projects that
_haven't_ yet been released to the public, and some that have, as well. So if
you're going to blame Larry for anything, this is not it.

~~~
smt88
I'm sure his intentions were good. It doesn't mean he followed through or
succeeded.

If they canceled a "ton of bullshit projects" and _still_ ended up with a time
when Hangouts, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Allo, Duo, Messages, and Voice
are all actively used but somehow still missing important fixes/features, then
he utterly failed.

No one gets credit for the things they didn't release when the things they
_did_ release are still baffling and often result in a betrayal of their loyal
users.

~~~
basch
Plus ChromeOS, chrome browser, Android, Android TV, Google TV, fuscia. They
just can't seem to figure out how to own the set top box (which is obviously
hard, it took Microsoft forever too and it's still too expensive, where is the
$30 Xbox).

Chrome OS and Android are a worse version of ios and macos.

------
summerlight
There are some ongoing theory-crafting in this thread, but the real reason
seems pretty simple; Larry and Sergey obviously don't want to deal with all
the management and operational stuffs, but only "moonshots" like autonomous
vehicles or quantum computing. Yeah, this was the whole purpose of
establishing a holding company, but Alphabet has grown by 2 times (both in
employee count and revenue) and probably they're now facing the similar amount
of bureaucratic workload again.

Personally, I think Sundar has been a pretty good CEO and probably a better
businessman for this size of organization but I'm still not sure whether this
leadership change will work better for Google though. Due to Alphabet's
structure, Larry and Sergey will keep majority voting stocks but they will be
away from most of the details in the company. Can they still make good
business decisions without such details?

~~~
prepend
> I think Sundar has been a pretty good CEO and probably a better businessman

Has he though? I get the sense that he’s really Balmering it up in that he
inherited a super successful company, and didn’t do much with it except not
screw up.

The two big growth areas- social and cloud- are dead or a distant and growing
third.

Google hasn’t done much new or exciting through his whole term. So no new
products, the 2016 election and congressional testimony debacle, randomly
firing different people with no sound reasoning.

It would be neat if someone could establish a vision beyond “10% growth
forever through lots of rent seeking.” Maybe a company has to go through their
Ballmer to get to their Nadella.

Maybe they can somehow convince Jeff Dean to be CEO and just write an AI that
generally maximizes profit.

~~~
basch
YouTube and Gmail are massive social networks.

~~~
theferalrobot
If you want to water down the definition beyond recognition then snail mail is
a social network.

~~~
backpropaganda
It's in the nature of social networks that new social networks don't look like
old ones. Youtube is definitely a social network, and so is Twitch, Discord,
TikTok, etc. Youtube has the additional advantage of having persistent count,
so I would count on Youtube lasting much longer than any other social network
whose popularity changes generation to generation.

~~~
basch
It is interesting that the part of "social network" that now defines something
as a social network is really the feed. Its a neverending not-river of more.
Chatrooms notwithstanding, a newsfeed a la facebook/youtube/reddit/, it's a
mix of professional content and user generated. The actual messaging with each
other, and sharing with each other is tangent to what they do. Social network
is almost a misnomer because most of the interaction is person->ai. For a
lurker who doesnt have friends, doesnt comment, and doesnt share; youtube and
tumblr are closer to netflix than they are to anything "social." That grouping
should be called something like an Autofeed Broadcaster, of which gmail is
tangentially like, because people use it to consume mass marketing and
newsletters.

Discord feels more like the odd one out because it is a realtime river, not
sorted or ranked like reddit. That sort of content rearranging is what makes
modern social networks different from forms and chat.

------
aazaa
Buried in a paragraph 2/3 of the way down:

> ... Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. ...

Not knowing the internals of Google, it seems as if this is the announcement
that Page and Brin are stepping down. Is this correct?

If so, what an incredibly subtle way to announce a high-profile pair of
resignations.

~~~
lacker
Yes, this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down.

I wouldn't really call it "incredibly subtle" \- most similar announcements
are wrapped in a bunch of corporate language as well. This is a pretty
standard way to announce this sort of thing.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I guess I just don't believe this. Google is one of the largest and most
powerful companies in the world. Having _both_ people step down like this is
incredibly strange.

I mean, neither of them even tried the ol' "I'm stepping down to spend time
with my family" thing.

~~~
keenmaster
Larry and Sergey are basically best friends. Their involvement with Google, as
a pair, has been receding for quite some time. Today's announcement was
foreshadowed by the creation of Alphabet Inc. as a parent company in 2015.

~~~
vl
After Brin’s affairs came to light, Page was so pissed off, he didn’t talk to
him for many months. They might not be best friends at this point.

~~~
smartbit
Details in _Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder’s
Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager | Vanity Fair_
[http://archive.is/kQvuR](http://archive.is/kQvuR) Febr 2015

------
emrehan
Dear Larry and Sergey,

Thank you for creating Google.

Nobody could prove that without it the web would have been a better place. You
couldn’t have known what’s to come when you were raising hundreds of thousands
of dollars as two students in 1998. Maybe your leadership has been one of the
least evil among the possibilities in the evil world we live in.

However, we know what is it like to lose control of your company, and how it
could inspire dystopian novels under your leadership now. There’re many
lessons for all the entrepreneurs to take from your story.

I sincerely hope that you would prioritize the greater benefit rather than the
Google’s benefit as years pass.

Sincerely, A Non-Googler, one of the 7.7 billion

~~~
xtracto
That is something that I kind of admire about Bill Gates: As Microsoft's boss
he was ruthless, and even anti-competitive, all to benefit his own company.

But somehow, he is one of the "best type of person" that could become the
richest man in our world. There are so many rich people that just look to be
buried with their millions or pass it to their family.

Hopefully Sergei and Larry will try to get the same type of legacy.

~~~
hangonhn
So Gates is not alone. Buffet and Ellison have both pledged the vast majority
of their wealth to the Gates Foundation. Somewhat unique to the US, our
billionaires tends to be fairly philanthropic.

~~~
yardie
Also unique to the US. We have one of the highest infant mortality rates of
any developed country. And our average life expectancy is one of the lowest
for a developed country [0]. We could a lot less philanthropic billionaires
and more economic policies that don't treat everyone as disposable cogs.

[0] [http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-
expectancy-b...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-
by-country/)

~~~
ALittleLight
The high infant mortality is largely explained by the fact that the US counts
premature birth related deaths as part of infant mortality and other countries
don't.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.htm)

Life expectancy loss is mostly drugs and obesity. Hard to see how
philanthropic billionaires are a problem on either front.

~~~
arrosenberg
Drug abuse and obesity are generally a response to chronic stress. America has
a chronic stress epidemic due to our work culture and lack of social safety
nets. Philanthropic billionaires are people (or progeny of those) who
successfully exploited this system. Ergo, the existence of one is correlated
with the other, and they share a common cause.

~~~
ALittleLight
Has our work culture recently become more stressful or our safety nets
diminished?

~~~
arrosenberg
Both, but probably more of the latter. Since the 70s the entire economy and
society has been built for consumption and price optimization. That has
resulted in both higher life stresses (more two income working households,
most Americans have no savings, etc.) and encouraged politicians to cut safety
nets which might have diminished the negative effects.

------
gorgoiler
Google! What a thing to have created in this world. Hats off to Page and Brin.

After the dotcom crash, and I don’t know if there’s any real analysis to be
had around this or if it’s just sentimentality, but personally there was
always a sense of hope attached to Google as they brought excitement back into
bleak times in the industry.

Facebook was a sort of cheerleader in that way as well, during the 2008 credit
crisis, way before the world turned sour towards the Facebook brand. Who will
be the great business to drag us out of the next financial / tech-industry
crisis?

------
rosybox
Alphabet and Google being a separate company makes even less sense now.

~~~
shadowgovt
It's a line-item hack, the way that Hollywood studios structure films to be
separate sub-corporations with their own fixed budgets.

So if a film crew, say, accidentally blows up a small town somehow, there's a
firewall between the assets that were dedicated to making that one film and
the entirety of, for example, Sony Pictures net worth and capital.

I'm not sure that firewall is well-tested in American law, but it's a well-
used approach and I've always assumed the Google / Alphabet arrangement was
for similar reasons (so that worst-case scenario on any 'bet is always
"Alphabet cuts bait and shuts it down, liquidates it, and debtors go after the
assets of the 'bet" without risking the performance numbers of the Google cash
cow directly).

~~~
notatoad
Isn't it the opposite of a line-item hack? Instead of being able to hide the
losses of their other bets in the profits of their ad division, the alphabet
structure gives their investors visibility into exactly how much money the
non-google parts of the company are losing.

~~~
shadowgovt
The hack is (and I can't explain why because _I_ don't get it) a lot of
investors still look at Google and only Google and don't care how much money
the 'bets are losing.

------
Wonnk13
This has to be a green light for TK to take Cloud and really run with it.

There's no way Sundar can give as much attention to Google and all the other
bets simultaneously. Curious what side projects of Larry and Sergey get turned
down now.

~~~
joemi
Who or what is TK? It's proving hard to google decisively for a relevant
meaning.

~~~
v64
Thomas Kurian [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kurian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kurian)

------
nvrspyx
I see a few comments praising Sundar. As someone who doesn’t follow closely,
but feels that Google has deteriorated dramatically under his watch, does
someone mind explaining the reasoning for said praise?

~~~
lacker
Google's market cap has approximately doubled while Sundar has been the CEO.
That's the simplest reason.

Personally I think a lot of their products have gotten better recently, like
the experience of using voice-controlled Google Maps in my car, and Google
Cloud is superior to AWS in many ways, but the company really offers so many
different product lines that it's hard for personal experience to be a great
representation.

~~~
nemothekid
> Google's market cap has approximately doubled while Sundar has been the CEO.

It’s hard for me to say that this is because of Sundar and not just because
the whole market has grown size and google already had a massive moat to
capture it. Apple, MS, Facebook, Amazon all have grown massively in the past 5
years.

However Google seems to continue to be a one trick pony - GCP lags behind the
competition despite the fact that Google invented cloud computing. Even Apple
is weaning off its iPhone revenue with its fast growing services division.

~~~
GauntletWizard
I see this meme all the time. What does GCP lag on? What is it missing?

I see a proliferation of AWS services, yes, but many seem to be replicating
things that GCP has had since the start, in multiple different formats without
clear direction. Bigquery covers most of the use cases of Redshift, Kineseis,
Athena, EMR, and others. It is at once decoupled from and well integrated with
their object storage, allowing reads and writes with clear translation when
necessary. I find myself reaching for Bigquery like semantics all the time and
having to cobble two or more AWS tools to get similar. I see the same pattern
repeated constantly - If I click "ECS" in the Amazon Console, it wants to sell
me ECS, ECR, Fargate, and EKS - All of which overlap in non-obvious ways.

Disclaimer: I'm Ex-google, and was a poweruser of dremel

~~~
gwking
My understanding is that GCP lags on developer trust, specifically when it
comes to support. Several years ago I was excited about GCP, but have mostly
lost interest after reading various stories about account lockouts here on HN.

~~~
nanoservices
This is accurate form my perspective. I work for a company that made a big bet
on Google Cloud and we spent the last 4 years building on it. We are now
moving to Azure because of the number of times Google kept dropping support
for things forcing us to rewrite our libraries. We should have never went with
PaaS (App Engine) but thats a different issue all together. App Engine Flex
was a nightmare to work with because Google couldn't help themselves with the
constant urge to change things by ripping out things and replacing them
instead of having a vision and improving on the existing offerings.

------
frakkingcylons
Title should just be Larry Page stepping down from Alphabet, Sundar Pichai to
become new CEO.

------
m712
>Nonetheless, Google's core service--providing unbiased, accurate, and free
access to information--remains at the heart of the company.

Hah!

------
bedhead
It is clear that Sergey and Larry (and Eric) have been asleep at the switch in
shaping Google's culture, which now looks like the campus of Evergreen State
College. Both he and Sergey have seemed checked out for years. Being the CEO
of this company, especially given everything they've accomplished, doesn't
seem very fun. I couldn't tell you what Sergey's been doing there or if he
even works at all. This company's culture is trending towards being toxic but
that they invented the world's greatest money-making machine has been able to
paper over a lot of the rot.

~~~
tomrod
I am out of the loop. What does this mean?

> It is clear that Sergey and Larry (and Eric) have been asleep at the switch
> in shaping Google's culture, which now looks like the campus of Evergreen
> State College.

~~~
rabidrat
Evergreen State College is (in)famous for its lack of traditional grades and
curricula: "non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students design
their own paths of study...Faculty write narrative evaluations of students'
work in place of issuing grades."

~~~
telotortium
And also infamous for its student activism, some would argue past the point of
all sense (see: Bret Weinstein).

------
ChuckMcM
I wish both Larry and Sergey well in their future endeavors. It is clear that
the mess that Google is in, the investigations, the internal revolts, the
general slide from being "good guys" to "bad guys" weighs on those who are
nominally tasked with addressing those issues.

By stepping out now they have no doubt made their lives easier but it puts
Sundar in an fairly challenging place. I hope he is up for it.

------
mikl
Kinda make that whole restructuring dance they did when creating Alphabet
pointless. The CEO of Google is once again in charge of all the things.

~~~
anonytrary
I'm sure the legal implications of this so-called "restructuring dance" remain
and are certainly not rendered pointless because of these title changes.

------
Starkus
I find it amusing that, if you comment on a thread on Hacker News, about
Google's censorship, relevant to the posted article that states google is
'unbiased'...you're...censored

------
lacker
I think this is good news. Google has sometimes felt like it was pulled in two
different directions - making the core business successful, and providing
spinoff cash for the crazy projects. Having the same person run both of them
seems like it will make management more efficient.

It probably means that a number of Larry and Sergey "pet projects" will become
deprioritized. Good. Self-driving cars seem like they have great potential. I
think that technology has the potential to make the entire Alphabet structure
worthwhile. But it also seems like it should no longer need the Alphabet
structure to protect itself.

~~~
matthewfcarlson
What are some Larry and Sergey pet project? Genuinely curious.

~~~
bduerst
Supposedly Google-X and Glass was Sergei's billionaire playground, with Waymo
being Larry's pet project.

------
ddp26
Larry and Sergey, thank you for the incredible gift that you gave the world.
You will be deeply missed at Google.

------
somerandomness
It'll be interesting to see how they use their preferred shares voting power
(which still give them effective control of the company).

------
ggm
Absolutely nothing about the structural discontent emerging in staff.

And nothing about the increasing sense of a loss of _claimed_ ethical stance.
I stress claimed, because the lack of concern at the top at its obvious demise
makes it less likely it was actually held as a core belief.

~~~
ardit33
Unless it there is more behind the scenes, the letter is basically saying:

We don't want to deal, or like/enjoy dealing with this pesky employee stuff.
We don't have the time, energy, or enjoy it, and they'd rather do something
else with their time and money.

They are in a position where they either crack-down on their culture to more
of a corp like, and appear to go full evil, or be even more lenient, and risk
small 'intolerant' groups or activists taking over and creating disruptions to
the business. Whatever they do at this point, they will be either painted as
the bad guys in the media (if they go full on evil corp); or the
'dysfunctional' company, if they allow even more discontent and become more
'college/academic like'.

Basically, their employees situation is becoming such a PITA for them, they'd
rather not deal with it and quit the company and do something else, more
interesting, instead....

They realize that they just don't enjoy dealing with the creature/organization
that they created.

Basically, it is the CEO's version of: "it is not you, but it is me" line of
break-up, and we all know what that line means.

~~~
shaneprrlt
I think that's a cynical view of the situation. These guys have grown a
college startup into one of the world's most valuable companies. They're rich
beyond imagination. More importantly, they're getting close to being 50. Would
you want a day job if you could retire 15 years earlier than most, especially
considering Google has served as a vehicle to explore a ton of other projects
they've been interested in (since maybe people would think, why not start
another company?).

Makes total sense, I'm sure they're looking forward to spending time on their
yachts with their families and not in meetings 8 hours a day.

~~~
zarkov99
I think they will regret it. Google was once a real special company. Their IPO
filling, their stance on China, those were principled, courageous stands that
came straight from Larry and Sergey. To see their beautiful baby turn into
another mega-corp, as hypocritical as any, colonized by activists and
careerists bent on distorting the social fabric to advance ideologies and
profits? Contemplating that turn of events when you had the power to stop it
but chose not to? That has to suck, even when you are doing the contemplation
from your yacht.

~~~
nostrademons
I think what they learned in the intervening 15 years is that there are very
strong structural forces pushing corporations towards the "traditional
company" form that everybody hates, and that even as CEO, even as controlling
shareholders, they were powerless to stop them.

At least, that's what I learned, having worked at Google during the period
where "Don't be evil" was still taken seriously, engineers could still propose
& develop their own projects, the public still liked them, and Larry was just
beginning to take the reins.

~~~
zarkov99
Were they that powerless, really? Or maybe they got tired and had a falling
out and subsequently lost hearth?

~~~
nostrademons
For the stuff that actually sucks about Google, yes, they were powerless. I
think they'd still be on top if they felt they could actually make Google into
the company they want it to be. Larry in particular does not give up easily.

Take stock price obsession. Everybody knows the dangers of having quarterly
earnings targets dictate the company strategy, and the moral compromises that
companies make to meet those targets. Google's initial founders' letter said
"If our earnings are lumpy, they'll be lumpy" (ironically, they were not -
earnings went up monotonically and consistently exceeded analysts' targets
until about 2013, for reasons I'm not going to get into here). And they took a
lot of steps - like the dual-class share structure that gave Larry, Sergey,
and Eric voting control over the company regardless of what Wall Street wanted
- to avoid that.

The problem is that stock price affects a lot more than just investors'
pocketbooks. When the stock was low, Google had trouble attracting talented
new engineers, which is critical to making new products that are really
excellent. Low stock price means negative PR cycles; the press is always happy
to write glowing reviews of fast-growing rocket ships, but as soon as they
start to flounder, the press will kick them when they're down. (For more
recent examples of this, see Theranos, WeWork, and Facebook.) The press cycle
in turn affects consumer attitudes towards the brand, which is the source of
both power and revenue.

There were many other examples like this - another big one is the negative
effect of company size on innovation, where once a company gets big enough new
product ideas will always get killed, regardless of how good they are, because
there is _somebody_ with veto power or just enough social clout to discourage
the innovator. I suspect this in particular was disheartening for Larry, who
both identified with would-be innovators and had protected them when Google
was smaller.

~~~
zarkov99
Thank you for the insights. That is a heart breaking story.

------
el_cujo
I wonder if this will result in any big changes at Google or is just codifying
the way things have been run for a while.

------
Rapzid
The whole thing reads like it was written by a PR person.

~~~
el_cujo
This is exactly the type of thing you have PR people on staff to write though?

~~~
Rapzid
Yeah, I highly doubt either CEO wrote this. Its target audience is investors:
"Everything is fine, buy more stock."

~~~
sidcool
That's the smart move right. Sundar is no Elon Musk to get away with gaffes

------
throwGuardian
This is probably an admission that bets outside core Google [YouTube, Maps,
Photos, cloud] & Android haven't paid off. Time to run alphabet in a more
disciplined, less "risky" manner? I'm expecting cuts to come in Alphabets'
"bets"

------
jiveturkey
Wow, people are taking a press release at face value. Not just any press
release (all are PR garbage) but one from Google, a master at corporate
doublespeak.

This is an ouster at worst, a forced resignation at best.

Were I to guess, the politics-at-work thing as gotten out of hand. Larry and
Sergey built the company in their image, in that specific way. One can easily
imagine them bristling at the notion of having to take away employee freedoms.

Because they are not willing to do what needs to be done to quell the
uprising, rather than see their company spiral down to darkness, they are
stepping aside so that others may do what needs to be done.

------
airnomad
Problem with google is that they are losing data game.

They own the web but meanwhile web became only one medium among many and a lot
of companies build their own "web"

Instagram app is essentially a browser to use IG's private "web" of content
google has no access to.

Same goes for twitter, even Snapchat.

So attention wise, google is loosing dominance as other companies are building
their own protocols on top of web.

Speaking of data,they own search intent (via Google) and web content (via
Google analytics).

However I'd say Facebook is ingesting way more data on non-content usage. They
made much easier for advertisers to connect into FBs audience graphs and cross
reference and retarget based on first-party visitor profiles.

~~~
xz0r
> Instagram app is essentially a browser to use IG's private "web" of content
> google has no access to.

Search engines are meant to index the open web. IG's public profiles are still
being indexed by Google. Google is winning the data game from an ad-tech point
of view but not loosing it.

------
smlacy
I wonder if this is actually: "Larry and Sergey resign over cancellation of
TGIF"?

~~~
kccqzy
Seems unlikely. Larry Sergey previously attended all TGIFs. Then after a
series of pointed questions at TGIF, they no longer decided to attend TGIFs.

------
bborud
Somehow it feels like Google’s soul died years ago, but was hooked up to life-
support. Reading that Larry leaves Alphabet would be the equivalent of just
unplugging the life support on Google’s soul.

And to be frank: this scares me.

------
bfrog
Sundar seems set on track to cause a large part of the google workforce to
question the ethics of their work, unless I've mis-read the headlines
(entirely possible) since he's taken the reigns.

------
TrickyRick
Am I the only one who recoils when hearing "Nonetheless, Google’s core
service—providing unbiased, accurate, and free access to information—remains
at the heart of the company.". This is more or less the complete opposite of
how I view Google (Apart from accurate maybe). Google delivers results which
are highly biased based on what they think you will like and what they will
make the most money from and you pay a high price for it, giving up all your
personal integrity.

------
pizzaparty2
Alphabet. Alpha bet. Ohh!

------
iandanforth
[https://www.wired.com/story/wired-25-sundar-pichai-china-
cen...](https://www.wired.com/story/wired-25-sundar-pichai-china-censored-
search-engine/)

Having Pichai in charge is deeply disturbing to me. If he has had a public
moment that demonstrated deep moral convictions that were put before the
obvious market benefit of the company I haven't heard about it. (But feel free
to provide links)

------
drcode
The fact that a layer of management can be eliminated with everyone remaining
on amicable terms seems like almost uniformly positive news for google.

~~~
orky56
How do you know everyone is on amicable terms? A press release is definitely
not the place to determine the reality of the situation.

------
ixtli
> Nonetheless, Google’s core service—providing unbiased, accurate, and free
> access to information—remains at the heart of the company.

How is it ok to just say clear lies like this?! Without making any value
judgements at all this is blatantly false. The ranking algorithms specifically
encode a bias into search results. This is actually explicitly what users
want, too! To be clear this is distressing to me because very powerful people
can throw around words uncritically in this way for niche political points
without being challenged.

EDIT: It seems people are taking this comment in a way I didn't intend for it
to be taken. Another example is that they are applying biases by sorting and
displaying results on news.google.com. Personally I really like how this is
done, but I think we need to be honest that it _is_ a bias so that we can move
on to a more productive conversation about what is or isn't a _good_ bias.

~~~
savanaly
Don't be too pedantic. By your definition, what even is unbiased? A list of
all the sites on the web, A to Z? Words are what we make of them, and there's
clearly some distinction between Google and, say, Baidu that is entirely
appropriate to capture with the word "unbiased".

~~~
ixtli
I dont think this is pedantic and my point is exactly as you describe! There
is no such thing as "unbiased" and people who are in search of that are living
in a dream world.

~~~
jmoss20
but surely people mean _something_ when they say "unbiased", right? (I'll take
a stab at it: something like "conveyed without the intention to deceive me,
especially politically/financially/etc...")

I get your point, and it's an important one -- but ime conversations are a lot
more productive when they're about the ideas, not the words. :)

~~~
JohnFen
> something like "conveyed without the intention to deceive me, especially
> politically/financially/etc...")

That isn't even close to the definition of "unbiased" that I use. To me,
something is "unbiased" if it based on facts without being interpreted in
accordance with some preexisting belief or worldview.

~~~
ixtli
For what it's worth i agree with this. A realistic example of what i would
describe as unbiased is, say, telemetry data from a radio telescope, or a
neutral reading of a poem or story.

Tools are unbiased.

I think the real danger is actually in the notion that "bias" is something
done to deceive, and I have encountered people who imply this quite a bit in
real life

By way of example: I have a strong bias towards the nationalization of
infrastructure. Many of my opinions and arguments are designed to support this
end because, for reasons I would _love_ to explain I believe it's the best
course of action. I am, if anything, prone to never letting anyone leave my
company without droning on and on about this! There is not deception involved.
People certainly do _hide_ their biases, or lie about things in order to
support their arguments, but this is not something inevitable with bias.

Ultimately I think everyone needs to deal with the reality that we ALL have
biases and we ALL inject them into our work. This is actually ok, because its
part of how we work to build the world we want to live in.

~~~
JohnFen
> I think the real danger is actually in the notion that "bias" is something
> done to deceive, and I have encountered people who imply this quite a bit in
> real life

I agree entirely. Bias is typically not something that is intentionally done
in an attempt to deceive. It comes naturally to people because they look at
the world through the lens of their own experiences and beliefs.

Everybody has a bias. The trick is to understand what sort of bias people
(including ourselves) have, so we can properly understand what they're saying.

------
gigatexal
Congrats to Sundar! He and Nadella need a movie about how they came in and ran
things.

------
lanevorockz
Unbiased ? LoL, things are so absurd these days. Google gives Search Optimised
results aimed at Ads. It was never about unbiased and it is a very silly and
unnecessary point to be added there.

------
williamDafoe
That's right, give him credit for Ruth's budget cuts and he is very good at
squelching employee will and silencing freedom of speech at Google.

------
mathattack
Wow - big news! It seems better to have a CEO who is “All in” rather than one
who is and one who isn’t. This is more work Sundar. I hope he has a strong
bench.

------
ocdtrekkie
Incredible way to paper over the likely source:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/alphabet-board-
investigating...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/alphabet-board-
investigating-inappropriate-relationships-by-execs.html)

Sergey Brin and Larry Page were terrible to women. They engaged in, promoted,
and paid for sexual harassment. Shortly after the Alphabet board is
investigating misconduct, Larry and Page are "retiring". And of course,
they're still worth billions.

~~~
telotortium
This news story is talking about an investigation of David Drummond. I'm not
going to rule out harassment claims against Page and Brin, but do you have a
better source?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The article mentions investigations in conduct of executives from various
lawsuits. Drummond is mentioned specifically in the article, and the
investigation 'encompasses' that story, but others are fairly well known.

I cited an example in response to another comment here.

------
ciustuc
"We could not have imagined, back in 1998 when we moved our servers from a
dorm room to a garage, the journey that would follow."

~~~
totalthrowaway
c.f.
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
cutenewt
John Legere is stepping down from T-Mobile.

Perhaps he might be asked to step in for Sundar if Sundar can't turn it around
in the next 18 months.

~~~
sidcool
Google should buy a hardware company and a carrier company to have a big
impact on hardware business

------
mandeepj
Shared are up. So, market has approved the move

------
sharadov
Sergei and Larry don't want to go before Congress and testify, Sundar will do
that for them.

------
dznodes
Could Larry and Sergey start a new business? I bet they would enjoy that and
likely succeed again.

------
nserrino
I wonder if this means that Google Cloud will be more likely to be split out
as its own company?

------
m23khan
google has been making lots of typical corporate moves lately.

------
tus88
How is this not a quasi-merger of the two then?

------
fireattack
Who will be the new President of Alphabet?

------
enitihas
TLDR version:

Sundar is now the CEO of _both_ Google and Alphabet, and Larry and Sergey have
taken a seat on the backbench.

------
sbuccini
Congrats to Sundar. Well deserved and I wish him the best of luck in his new
role.

------
mrobot
Nationalize Google.

------
nfRfqX5n
is dual CEO'ship going to become a thing now?

------
utopcell
:'(

------
ummonk
I recommend changing the title to “Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and
Alphabet” (which I’ve quoted from the article).

~~~
dang
Ok, changed.

------
rickncliff
I don't much care about throwing the codeword "unbiased" in there, it's just
pandering to critics and their nonsense talking points.

------
jariel
Leaving just when there are the first real signs of existential trouble for
Google ...

Google was fairly succesfull right from the start, they deserve a lot of
credit for that, but anyone with experience knows how different the climate is
when things are up vs. down; When things are up, everything is easy, when
things are down, everything is hard.

As much as I kind of loathe Ellison ... at least he's there 'in the control
room' the whole time.

------
slowenough
Possibly off-topic but who will be Sundar's successor? Who is likely?

------
fjrufjfjfu
This is amazing. What happened to those guys?

------
jmmcd
Please please please, just keep telling Sundar and everyone, "don't be evil".

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I like the _idea_ of the "don't be evil" rule, but it always seemed overly
naive / simplistic to me.

Even without factoring in self-justifying rationalizations, people can have
significantly different ideas of what counts as evil.

~~~
bogwog
"Don't be evil" is perfect because of how simple it is. It's supposed to be
common sense.

> people can have significantly different ideas of what counts as evil.

And those people, who need someone to explain to them what is or isn't evil,
aren't welcome.

That's why I personally loved that motto. Too bad that whole ethos got dropped
like it was a recently-launched product.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
This topic fascinates me, but I haven't found a way to productively discuss it
on HN.

If you too find it interesting, you may enjoy doing a literature search on the
topic.

~~~
saalweachter
I personally like the semantic distinction between "don't be evil" and the way
it is often misremembered on HN, "do no evil".

Do no evil seems stricter than don't be evil. How much evil _can_ you do
before you _are_ evil? Or can you _be_ evil while _doing_ no evil?

------
mr_woozy
I hate google and you should too.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

------
cmiles74
TLDR: We are just as awesome and virtuous today as we were 21 years ago.

Such self congratulatory nonsense.

------
radiusvector
Wow, Sundar is truly phenomenal.

------
sys_64738
An ad company has a new CEO. Why is this news?

~~~
lucb1e
I'm also not sure what the news is. The (in 2014) new CEO of Microsoft
apparently got rid of an entire management layer, that seems like news.
Without an intention like that being announced, this is celeb news for nerds
and really only tells me it'll be new face same story -- at least until we
know more.

------
ageofwant
A VP of customer service, and 'not shutting shit down today, perhaps' would
have been nice.

------
luxuryballs
Just in time for some plausible deniability when Google goes hard on
manipulating the 2020 elections next year.

------
perseusprime11
This is a very well deserved promotiom for the hard working Sundar. He is
likely to reign in moonshots and other bets that are unlikely to succeed.

------
leowoo91
TIL that is a valid url: [http://google/](http://google/)

~~~
messo
Does not work here. Maybe it is your DNS that auto-corrects / redirects the
URL?

~~~
leowoo91
Sounds about right, I have pihole setup which utilize opendns+google.

------
lawrenceyan
A well deserved congratulations to Sundar's promotion!

Larry and Sergey have spent the majority of their time on Other Bets for quite
some time now, and it's good to see that this is finally being solidified /
recognized within Alphabet's management structure.

~~~
option
Can someone please explain why it is well deserved? For example, when I was at
MSFT it was very clear why Satya deserved to be the next CEO - for leading and
growing the cloud business from irrelevance to a major pillar of MSFT. What
about Sundar? Is this all because he led Chrome?

~~~
jm4
I don’t get it either. Google’s reputation has been lousy, there’s something
weird going on among employees and the company isn’t clearly advancing in any
particular area. Sundar strikes me as Google’s Ballmer.

Satya, on the other hand, has been outstanding. Microsoft has transformed and
looks like a company that will be dominant for at least another 20 years.

~~~
tehlike
Google would be lucky if sundar was ballmer.

Ballmer doesnt get enough credit for pivoting msft into enterprise...

~~~
yoz-y
Pivoting into entreprise from what? Microsoft always targeted entreprise
first.

------
nafizh
Sundar Pichai is the Steve Ballmer of Google. Google has lost a lot of street
cred under him, and it seems they are happy with long may it continue.

------
techntoke
Google has done some things well, but some things very poorly. First, fire
whoever decided to prevent syncing Google Photos to Drive and not having a
compatible Photos API for syncing original backups.

Next, invest in and add features to Google Music or stop charging for it.

Last, Google News sucks. No matter how much I dislike content it keeps showing
me more of the same. Reminds me of YouTube. People should get heated on Google
curating propaganda.

