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The search giant is also reshuffling its product teams in order to move them into two distinct divisions amid its AI focus.
After 12 years at the helm of several teams across Google, Prabhakar Raghavan will step away from his role leading search and ads and become the company’s chief technologist.
Nick Fox, a longtime Google executive, will step in to lead the company’s Knowledge and Information (K&I) teams, which includes search, ads, geo and commerce products.
In a statement yesterday (17 October), CEO Sundar Pichai said Raghavan will be working directly with him in the new chief technologist role to provide “technical direction” within the company.
“Prabhakar’s leadership journey at Google has been remarkable, spanning Research, Workspace, Ads and K&I,” said Pichai. “I’m so grateful to Prabhakar for the strong foundation and leadership bench he’s built across K&I. That includes his incredible senior leaders and Nick who is ready to hit the ground running in his new role as SVP of K&I.”
The change in leadership comes at the same time as a team restructure, as the tech giant continues to fight for its place in the AI arms race.
“To keep increasing the pace of progress, we’ve been making shifts to simplify our structures along the way, including the creation of Google DeepMind and the joining of the Platforms and Devices teams,” said Pichai. “As a next step, Prabhakar and I have been thinking through how to structure our Knowledge & Information team for the Gemini era.”
The reshuffle will see the Gemini app team – currently led by Sissie Hsiao – join Google DeepMind under Demis Hassabis. This move aims to bring the teams closer together and enable fast deployment of the company’s new models in the Gemini app.
Additionally, the Assistant teams, which focuses on devices and home experiences, will move to the Platforms and Devices team so it can “sit closer to the product surfaces they’re building for and bring our AI-powered home initiatives”.
Having initially fallen behind its rivals in the AI race, Google has been upping its game over the last year, having announced a suite of new AI tools, a new chip and more at its Google Next 2023 event.
However, it has not been without its blunders. When Google initially demoed its Bard AI chatbot in February 2023, a promotional video of the chatbot in action contained incorrect information about the James Webb Space Telescope.
And more recently, the company had to apologise for “missing the mark” when its Gemini tool generated images of people of colour in German military uniforms from World War II.
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