Google’s 2024 saw a number of changes in its executive ranks. As the company doubles down on AI, it has a new CFO and a new head of search. There have also been some leadership changes in the cloud division.
A good way to summarize Google’s 2024 is “AI, AI, AI.” After a turbulent 2023 filled with restructuring, layoffs, and pivots, this year the search giant began to turn the story around and reassert itself as a leader in artificial intelligence.
This year was also a big year for executive personnel changes. Alphabet had some new faces and departures, but the most interesting changes occurred in executives who stayed within Alphabet’s walls. This included Google bringing in a new head of search and a new head of Europe. The company hired a new chief financial officer this year and made some changes in its cloud division.
The biggest additions, departures, and transfers in 2024 are as follows:
Subscriber: Anat Ashkenazi
Google hired a new chief financial officer this year. Anat Ashkenazi comes from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, where he served as the company’s CFO for the past three years. Her tenure at Alphabet comes nearly a year after Ruth Porat, the company’s longtime chief financial officer, announced last year that she would take on a new role overseeing investments and the company’s long-term bets. After a period of preparation.
The company Ashkenazy ended up with faced a variety of challenges, the biggest of which was the aggressive push into AI and the existential threat to the search business from competitors such as OpenAI. Some investors hope Ashkenazy’s appointment will bring greater transparency to Google’s growing businesses, including AI and subscriptions.
Participation (re): Norm Shazer
In 2017, Noam Shazeer and several other researchers co-authored a paper detailing the ideas currently being used to drive the generative AI boom. Shazier left Google in 2021, frustrated that the company had allowed rivals like OpenAI to exploit his work and failed to realize its potential itself. He co-founded Character.AI, a new AI startup.
This year, Google brought Shazeer back and reportedly paid an eye-watering $2.7 billion for the Character.AI technology license, a deal that included Shazeer and Character.AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas. That included going back to Google. Shazeer has been working on improving the inference capabilities of Google’s Gemini model. The company revealed the following in December: experimental model “I was trained to think out loud.”
Left: Shailesh Prakash
When Shailesh Prakash, the Washington Post’s longtime head of data, leaves the company in 2022 to join Google, it will be a huge boon for the search giant’s news business and a sign of tensions between Google News and the publisher. It was thought that this could be a way to alleviate the Prakash left in November as part of an increasingly complex online publishing landscape where AI companies are acquiring and using their content, including Google.
(Disclosure: Business Insider owner Axel Springer was among a media group that filed a lawsuit against Google in February, alleging losses due to the company’s digital advertising practices.)
Matt Brittin, who was president of Google EMEA, will leave the company in early 2025. Eoin Noonan/Web Summit via Getty Images
Left: Matt Brittin
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Matt Brittin joined Google in 2007 and helped build the search giant’s UK operations before moving on to oversee all of Google’s Europe, Middle East and Africa operations. In October, Brittin announced his intention to step down and appoint a replacement, with Debbie Weinstein confirmed in December. Brittin will not officially retire from Google until early 2025.
“Passing the baton is a pivotal moment,” Brittin wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his plans to step down.
“We are just beginning to glimpse the transformative benefits that AI will bring to billions of lives, and people in our part of the world are showing the way,” he added.
Left: Adair Fox Martin
Equinix announced in March that it had appointed Adair Fox Martin as its next president and CEO, ending her nearly three-year tenure at Google. She joined the search giant in 2021 as president of EMEA cloud and was appointed head of international and Irish operations the following year.
Left: Bob Fratty
In August, Bob Frati resigned from his role as VP of Sales at Workspace after just over a year at Google. Before joining Google, he was chief sales and success officer at Slack.
Left: Amit Zaveri
Google Cloud Vice President and Head of Platforms Amit Zavery left the company in October to become COO of ServiceNow. He spent about 25 years at Oracle before joining Google.
“It has been a career-defining privilege to help Google Cloud grow its annual revenue from $7.3 billion to more than $41 billion and create the world’s fourth-largest enterprise software company,” Zavery said in announcing his retirement. I wrote this in a LinkedIn post.
Prabhakar Raghavan, chief engineer at Google, said: google
Go to: Prabhakar Raghavan
One of Google’s biggest leadership changes occurred in October when the company’s head of search, Prabhakar Raghavan, resigned. As Google’s head of search, Raghavan also oversaw ads, maps, commerce, and Google’s voice assistant, but that responsibility now falls to Nick Fox, who has been elevated to the role. Raghavan’s new role will be chief technologist, reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai and focusing on his “computer science roots,” according to a memo Pichai wrote to the company in October. Take on the role of getting back on track. Raghavan joined Google in 2012 and worked in the company’s advertising business before taking over search in 2020.
Transfer: Nick Fox
Nick Fox currently runs Google’s core search and advertising businesses and could one day be in line for the CEO chair. Fox joined Google in 2003 and was a longtime executive, working on products such as Google Fi and Assistant. In 2022, he was named interim head of Google’s commerce business, where he currently oversees the business.
“I frequently turn to Nick to tackle my toughest product questions, and he is consistent with his tenacity, speed, and optimism,” Pichai wrote in a memo to the company in October. “It will bring about progress.”
Debbie Weinstein, President of Google EMEA. OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images
Transfer: Debbie Weinstein
Debbie Weinstein became one of Google’s most powerful people in December, taking over the reins of the search giant’s Europe, Middle East and Africa operations and its nearly 30,000 employees. Mr. Weinstein has been with Google for more than a decade, most recently as vice president and managing director of Google UK and Ireland.
She will be tasked with dealing with European regulators and rolling out Google’s many new AI products around the world.
“This is a truly exciting moment for us as we continue to drive remarkable advances in AI so that everyone in our region and around the world can benefit from this technology,” she wrote on LinkedIn. I wrote it.
Move: Aparna Pappu
Google’s head of Workspace resigned in October, BI first reported. Aparna Pappu, who has led the division since July 2022, said she is ready for the “next opportunity” at Google, and that Jerry Dischler, president of cloud applications, will lead the workspace in the future. announced that he would lead the Under Pappu’s watch, Google introduced AI to its Workspace product, but it struggled along the way. Google’s new Gemini 2.0 feature could be just what Workspace needs.
