In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Ph.D. students at Stanford University when they launched a startup, called Google (GOOGL), dedicated to creating an advanced Internet search engine. The project, originally developed in the duo's bedrooms and named “Backrub,” quickly took Silicon Valley by storm. Now, 26 years later, their business is one of the largest technology companies in the world and the undisputed leader in search, with many expanded features, such as Google Maps and Gmail.
In 2015, Page and Brin formed the holding company Alphabet (GOOGL) to oversee Google and a number of other private businesses it had acquired or completed, including YouTube, drone delivery, anti-aging research and autonomous driving. Today, Alphabet is the fourth most valuable public company in the world with a market capitalization of over $2 trillion.
While Google has remained true to its roots in search and innovation, it has also been forced to face the challenges of antitrust and position itself amid industry developments such as the AI revolution. Page and Brin stepped down from their leadership roles as CEO and president in 2019, leaving their conference in the hands of a management team that oversaw its various divisions. Here's a look at some of the senior leaders leading Alphabet's expansion efforts:
Sundar Photosi, 52, CEO of Google and Alphabet
Photosi has been with Google for twenty years. Starting as a product manager in 2004 responsible for the development of Google Chrome and Google Toolbar, he was appointed CEO of Google in 2015 and took over the parent company in 2019.
Picashi, who received an estimated $226 million in compensation in 2022, has an estimated net worth of $1 billion, according to Bloomberg. Before joining Google, he worked briefly at Applied Materials and consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Pichai, who is originally from India, has a master's degree in engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Ruth Porat, 67, president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet
Porat began his career at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s, where he eventually worked his way up to vice president and chief financial officer in 2010. Five years later, he left investment banking to become a chief financial officer with Google and Alphabet.
Last year, Porat announced plans to transition to a new role as chief investment officer of the search giant and its parent company. In that role, he managed Google and Alphabet's corporate investments in areas such as infrastructure, real estate and data centers. Porat also oversees the company's “Other Bets” portfolio, which includes self-driving business Waymo and drone delivery company Wing.
Anat Ashkenazi, 52, chief financial officer of Google and Alphabet
A year after Porat announced his plans to step down as CFO, Ashkenazi, a former pharmaceutical executive, in June emerged as his successor, tasked with shepherding Google and Alphabet into an AI-focused future. than ever before, and I am honored to join Sundar and his leadership team as they invest in the company's future at such an exciting time,” Ashkenazi said in a statement earlier this year.
Ashkenazi came to Google from a more than 20-year career at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, where he started in 2001. After a series of different roles covering the financial and operational aspects of the company, he became its chief financial officer in 2021.
Prabhakar Raghavan, 64, is a principal engineer at Google
Raghavan first joined Google in 2012 after a stint at search rival Yahoo, where he oversaw the company's search and advertising division. He took on similar responsibilities at Google, managing advertising and marketing. In 2020, he was promoted to senior vice president of knowledge and experience to oversee products such as search.
Earlier this month, Photosi announced that Raghavan would be leaving his current job to become a senior engineer at Google and help the company focus on AI. culture of technological excellence,” the CEO said in a statement. Raghavan's previous role will be filled by Nick Fox, a longtime Google executive and member of Raghavan's leadership team.
Philipp Schindler, 54, Google's chief business officer
As Google's chief business officer, Schindler oversees the company's global and regional sales of services such as online advertising. He joined Google in 2009 to oversee its business in Europe. Schindler, who reportedly manages about 29,000 employees, previously ran sales operations at AOL (AOL) Germany and worked at CompuServe. He started his career in the 1990s in the skills development program of the German media organization Bertelsmann.
Liz Reid, 43, head of Google Search
Reid first joined Google more than two decades ago and made history as the first female engineer at the company's New York office. His early responsibilities included contributions that enabled local results for services such as Google search and maps. He spent the last few years leading Google's search expertise and working on projects that include productive AI In March, he was named head of Google Search.
“I am humbled by the opportunity to shape the future of this important product,” Reid said in a LinkedIn post earlier this year. The executive noted that, in addition to improving the quality of Google Search through updated spam and ranking policies, he plans to continue focusing on a new product feature called “AI Overviews”.
Thomas Kurian, 58, CEO of Google Cloud
Kurian has been with Google since 2018, when he was tapped to lead the company's cloud computing services division. //Was his first role as CEO of Google Cloud? If so, I think we can combine these two sentences.//As CEO of Google Cloud, the executive is focused on introducing new pricing models, improving customer service and working closely with its business customers.
Kurian launched his career in the 1990s with McKinsey & Company, first as a business analyst and later as an engagement manager. He then worked at Oracle during a 22-year career that saw him become president of product development within the software giant.
Neal Mohan, 51, CEO of YouTube
Mohan began his career at DoubleClick, an advertising company acquired by Google in 2008. The executive then spent a few years working in the ad space at Google before moving on to YouTube, //What year did you move to YouTube?//acquired by Google in 2006, to serve as its chief product officer under then-CEO Susan Wojcicki.
After Wojcicki resigned last year, Mohan was appointed to replace him. Under his leadership, YouTube focused on new initiatives, such as supporting creators, live streaming and protecting children using the platform. Earlier this year, Mohan revealed that YouTube TV, its live television service, has 8 million subscribers and that the company's partner program has paid creators and media companies nearly $70 billion over the past three years. Under Mohan, YouTube has also begun introducing new systems and policies to deal with deepfakes and misinformation linked to the advent of AI.
Demis Hassabis, 48, CEO of Google DeepMind
Hassabis recently made headlines for winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, a project that helps solve the age-old problem of protein folding. AlphaFold is one of many projects from DeepMind, the machine learning startup Hassabis founded in 2010 that was acquired by Google four years later.
DeepMind is also famously behind AlphaGo, the first AI program to beat a human world champion in the game of Go. In addition to serving as CEO of Google DeepMind, Hassabis also heads Isomorphic Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet that was founded three years ago to help accelerate drug discovery. He previously co-founded video game developer Elixir Studios and was lead AI developer at Lionhead Studios.
Dmitri Dolgov, 46, and Tekedra Mawakana, 53, co-CEOs of Waymo
In 2016, Google's self-driving car project spun off from the company to Waymo, now owned by Alphabet. As of 2021, Waymo is jointly owned by Mawakana and Dolgov. Dolgov was the founder of Google's first self-driving project and worked on the project between 2009 and 2016 before becoming Waymo's chief technology officer. He also participated in efforts to achieve automated driving at Toyota and Stanford University.
Mawakana started at Waymo in 2017 as head of global policy before becoming its chief external officer and chief operating officer. He has held roles in the legal departments of AOL and Yahoo.
Stephen Gillett, 48, CEO of Verily
Gillett is the CEO and chairman of Verily, the health technology company formerly known as Google Life Science. It was completed in Google's moonshot, X, in 2015. Aimed at making health data more useful, it has been owned by Gillett since 2020. The executive previously worked at Google's X division and also spent time at GV, the Alphabet arm. focuses on corporate investment.
Gillett previously co-founded and co-founded Chronicle, a cybersecurity company acquired by Google in 2019. Earlier in his career, Gillett held senior roles at companies such as Best Buy and Starbucks ( SBUX ).
Arthur Levinson, 74, CEO of Calico
Levinson has been leading Calico since the biotech company was first founded by Google in 2013. Focusing on long-term research into health, longevity and diseases associated with aging, it was incorporated into Alphabet after the founding of the holding company two years later.
Levinson served as a director of Google from 2004 to 2009 and was the head of the biotech company Genentech between 1996 and 2009. He has served as chairman of Apple (AAPL) since 2011. He reportedly owns more Apple shares than Tim Cook and is worth an estimated $1.4 billion.
Adam Woodworth, 39, CEO of Wing
Wing, a drone delivery business, is another company that started at Google's moonshot stage before becoming an Alphabet subsidiary in 2018. Originally helmed by Woodworth and James Ryan Burgess while in development at X, the two split their responsibilities after that. graduated from the factory with Burgess acting as CEO and Woodworth serving as chief technology officer. Woodworth, who also previously worked at the aerospace company Aurora Flight Sciences, became the Wing's new chief in 2022 when Burgess left his role.
Focusing on residential deliveries, Wing in 2019 received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to deliver packages commercially using drones. It currently operates on-demand residential services across the US, Europe and Australia.
