Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
Page announced that he would be stepping down as C.E.O. of Google to join Brin in ruling a new parent company, Alphabet, which will include Google, Google X, Calico, and various other ventures. No doubt, there will be conspiracy theorists who seek to explain the move. Ken writes :
In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules. He wasn’t happy when, in 2001, Google’s investors asked him to step aside as C.E.O. for “adult supervision,” although he and his replacement, Eric Schmidt, forged a strong bond. Page’s drive to think bigger, and to aim for the moon rather than the top of the trees, is shared by his co-founder, Sergey Brin. In 2011, when Page once again became the C.E.O., Brin stepped down from daily management to return to what the pair had done as graduate students: invent.