Alphabet Inc.’s Executive Chairman to Step Down

Billionaire Eric Schmidt will be stepping down as executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet.

Alphabet Inc. said on Thursday that its executive chairman will step down in January, ending a 17-year-run in which he played a central role in building a promising startup called Google into a global technology powerhouse.

He will continue to serve on the Alphabet's board of directors and act as an adviser on focused on technical and science issues, the company said.

“The time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition,” Schmidt said in a statement.

"I'm incredibly excited about the progress our companies are making and about the strong leaders who are driving that innovation," said Chief Executive Larry Page in a statement.

Schmidt, who was recruited to the company by Google co-founders Page and Sergey Brin, served as chief executive from 2001 through 2011, acting as what the three jokingly referred to as the “adult supervision.”

"Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition," Schmidt said in a statement. "The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving. In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work."

Among Schmidt's accomplishments were taking the company public in 2004, shepherding critical product initiatives like the Android mobile operating system, and overseeing a massive 2015 corporate restructuring in which Google became a business unit of the holding company Alphabet.

In his new role, he'll likely advise the company's urban development arm, Sidewalk Labs, its deep learning efforts, and its healthcare spin-offs, Verily and Calico.

Alphabet expects that its board will appoint a new, non-executive chairman at its next meeting in January, meaning that it will join the ranks of Apple and Microsoft as major companies with non-executive chairman.

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