Eric Schmidt, who led Google's transformation into a tech giant, has left the company
Eric Schmidt, who drove Google's transformation from Silicon Valley start-up to global titan, is no longer an adviser to the search giant and its parent Alphabet, marking another milestone in recent personnel shake-ups that've seen the company's old guard bow out.
Schmidt, tapped as Google's CEO in 2001, left his role as a technical advisor in February, according to a person familiar with the situation. His exit ends a 19-year tenure at Google, where he was brought in to be the "adult supervision" to the company's young founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Schmidt's departure comes three years after Schmidt said he was stepping down as executive chairman and would no longer serve in an operational role.
Representatives for Schmidt and Google declined to comment.
Schmidt's exit marks another stage in Google's evolution, and comes as Schmidt's participation in government projects has raised questions about conflicts of interest. Late last year, Page and Brin, who started Google as Stanford University grad students in 1998, handed leadership of Alphabet and its sprawling operations to Sundar Pichai, who had been running the core search business since 2015. David Drummond, the company's 14-year legal chief, retired in January after scrutiny over past relationships.
As the original management departs, employees and industry observers have questioned whether the world's largest search engine, with more than 120,000 employees around the globe, can maintain its famously freewheeling culture. In the past three years, tensions between management and employees have mounted over the handling of sexual misconduct allegations directed at top executives, a censored search engine project in China and initiatives around artificial intelligence for the US Department of Defense.
Schmidt's exit means he is officially, if symbolically, off Alphabet's payroll. He was earning $1 per year in the adviser role.
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