The web has been a buzz today with news of a CEO shakeup at Google. I don’t follow personality politics, so I won’t deconstruct all of the individuals involved (and I probably couldn’t keep their names straight) but there is a little bit of interesting information in the announcement.
The current CEO is stepping aside but remaining active on the executive board, so we shouldn’t expect too much of a radical change in direction. So why play musical chairs if everyone is on board with the big picture?
So Larry, Sergey and I have been talking for a long time about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making—and over the holidays we decided now was the right moment to make some changes to the way we are structured.
So don’t expect Google to make a 180 degree turn: what they’re trying to tell us in this press release/blog post is that they’re shifting gears for the purpose of speeding up on the path they’ve started.
Of course, why shouldn’t they? While the entire global economy has panicked and wobbled, Google has done nothing but grow. They continue to dominate search and search marketing, and there is no sign that any real competition will challenge them in those sectors. Instead, they’ve been successfully breaking in to new markets like smart phones, internet tv, maps, and most recently even cars that can drive themselves.
Every year they’re coming up with a dozen new projects and pulling off billions in profits anyway. So if this CEO shakeup really accomplishes what they say they want to accomplish, expect things to really boom in the next few years.
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