Eric Schmidt to leave role as Alphabet's Executive Chairman, will become a "technical advisor"

Google’s parent company Alphabet announced a major shake up in its executive ranks today. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, will step down from his role as Executive Chairman on Alphabet’s board of directors, which he has held since 2011. The change will officially take place during the company’s next board meeting in January 2018.

Schmidt will remain on Alphabet’s board, but today’s press release quotes CEO Larry Page as saying that Schmidt will now serve as a “technical advisor on science and technology issues”.  That would seem to indicate that Schmidt won’t be as involved in the day-to-day business at Alphabet. In his own statement, Schmidt said, “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.” The press release added that Alphabet plans to name a non-executive chairman at its January board meeting.

Schmidt first joined Google as its CEO in 2001, after previously serving as CEO of Novell. During his time leading Google, Schmidt saw the company grow and change from a simple search engine business to one that launched a number of ventures, including the Android OS that now dominates the smartphone industry. In 2011, Schmidt became Executive Chairman for Google, and kept that title when the company made the decision to reorganize under the Alphabet name in 2015 with Google as one of its subsidiaries.