Alphabet has announced it will be losing Eric Schmidt, who from January will transition from his position as executive chairman of the board of directors, to becoming a technical advisor. Schmidt will continue to serve on the board of Alphabet, which he joined 17 years ago. The company expects to appoint a non-executive chairman.
Schmidt did not give a reason why he was leaving the company, saying only that he has in the recent years spent much of his time on science and technology issues and philanthropy and that he planned to expand that work. He implied that the company was in a good place and that he, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Google CEO Sundar Pichai all felt it was the right time for this transition.
Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Schmidt worked at Bell Lab and other IT companies before joining Sun Microsystems, Novell and then Google in 2001 where he was first named chairman of the board of directors and then CEO. He served as CEO for Google from 2001 to 2011. In 2006, he was also elected to Apple’s board of directors, a position he held until summer 2009. He has served on other boards, including for Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University.
