Google bosses become its parents - 8th December 2019

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are resigning their jobs at the company. They say that as 'proud parents' they will watch the company develop and offer it 'advice and love'.

Page and Brin founded Google in a garage in California in 1998. They are giving up their jobs as the Chief Executive Officer (Page) and President (Brin) of Alphabet, which is Google's parent company. They are both 46 years old. They say they will remain "actively involved as board members, shareholders, and co-founders". However, they think Google no longer needed them to manage it. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, is taking over as the new CEO of Alphabet too.

Google's amazing 21-year growth demonstrates how skilled and innovative Page and Brin have been. Their Google search engine made it much easier to search the internet. They then looked for new ideas and products to develop into useful technology.

The name 'Google' comes from 'googol', a very big number (1 plus 100 zeros). Someone accidentally spelled it 'Google' and Page preferred it. Page and Brin liked being flexible and adaptable. This helped new ideas evolve and contributed to Google's success.

Pichai encouraged them to build the Chrome web browser. They bought and developed Android for smartphones and also purchased YouTube. They sold advertising which helped fund experimental projects in lab 'X'.

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