Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are relinquishing their roles as CEO and president, respectively, of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, the company announced Tuesday.
Current Google CEO Sundar Pichai is set to absorb their current responsibilities and become CEO of both Alphabet and Google.
“Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost,” Page and Brin wrote in a letter about the decision. “While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents – offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!”
Title changes aside, it’s unclear just how significant a management shake-up the move represents. Page and Brin pledged Tuesday to “remain actively involved as Board members, shareholders and co-founders,” as well as to “continue talking with Sundar regularly.”
That doesn’t sound like a major departure from the roles they’ve held since at least 2015, when Google reorganized and Pichai took over as CEO. Page and Brin haven’t handled daily oversight at the company in quite some time ― CNBC notes that Page stopped running earnings calls in 2013, and he hasn’t delivered a keynote at the company’s biggest developer’s conference since 2012.
But the bit about remaining involved as shareholders is no lie: The pair hold 51% of the voting shares of Alphabet.
This article has been updated throughout.