Google bosses become its parents - 8th December 2019

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are resigning their jobs running the company. They say they are transitioning to 'proud parents' and instead will watch the company develop, 'offering advice and love'.

Page and Brin, who founded Google in a garage in California in 1998, are giving up their jobs at parent company Alphabet. The 46-year-olds are the Chief Executive Officer (Page) and President (Brin). They say they will remain "actively involved as board members, shareholders, and co-founders", but don't consider Google needs them to manage it any longer. Google's existing CEO, Sundar Pichai, is taking over as the new CEO of Alphabet too.

Google's amazing 21-year growth from a small start-up company demonstrates how innovative and insightful Page and Brin have been. Their Google search engine made it much easier to search the disorganised mess of data on the internet. They built on that achievement and identified new ideas and products to develop into useful technology.

The name 'Google' started out as 'googol', the name for the mega number (1 plus 100 zeros). Page brainstormed it with friends at Stanford University and someone accidentally spelled it 'Google'. Page thought it worked better.

This flexibility and adaptability was key to Google's success, helping new ideas evolve into products. Deciding to build Chrome, buying and developing Android and acquiring YouTube have continued the firm's success.

In addition, selling online advertising has provided the funds for their experimental projects in lab 'X'.

Google's new leader, Pichai, needs to guide Google through difficult times ahead. There are challenges from companies like Amazon and people are worried about how technology is being used.