Google Co-Founders Unexpectedly Leave Active Roles

Sergey Brin and Larry Page

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from active management of the internet giant’s parent, surrendering immediate control to a low-key company veteran who must navigate global regulatory threats as well as employee discontent.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Page and Brin, who had been chief executive and president, respectively, of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said Tuesday they would hand control immediately to Sundar Pichai, Google’s existing CEO. They remain on Alphabet’s board and will still together control a majority of voting power over company decisions under Alphabet’s dual-class share structure.

The 47-year-old Pichai also must now take on a larger role in addressing the many regulatory and political threats that swirl around the company and much of the tech industry.

Page and Brin founded Google as Stanford University students working out of a garage in 1998, and built it from a straightforward search engine into a global conglomerate that controls how most of the world interacts with the internet. They also created an often-restless and freewheeling corporate culture, which became a model for some technology peers but of late has been challenged to match prior growth and mired in internal political debates.

Although still closely identified with the company, the co-founders have been a dwindling visible presence inside the Mountain View, Calif., campus for years, current and former employees say. They haven’t personally addressed employee complaints, from across the political spectrum, that the company culture has become conventionally corporate, and less open, than in the past.

Nonetheless, their move to cede management responsibilities to Mr. Pichai was unexpected.

Google faces an unusually fierce collection of threats this year. Competitors like Amazon.com Inc. are chipping at its online-advertising business, while state and federal regulators are beginning broad investigations of purported anticompetitive behavior. Google has pledged to cooperate with the inquiries.