Alphabet announced significant management changes, with Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to replace Larry Page as CEO of parent Alphabet Inc.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to transition from their roles as CEO and President, respectively, of Alphabet. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, becomes CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
Page and Brin will remain active as co-founders, shareholders and board members of Alphabet.

"While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it's time to assume the role of proud parents — offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!" Page and Brin wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Page, Brin and Pichai have been trying to apply developing artificial intelligence software to make web searching and other tasks faster.

But the vision faces scrutiny, with governments demanding better safeguards, less anticompetitive conduct and more taxes from the world’s largest online advertising company.

Alphabet, which owns more than a dozen companies including self-driving car technology business Waymo and health care software company Verily, emerged in 2015 as part of a restructuring of Google.

“With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure,” the co-founders said. “We are deeply committed to Google and Alphabet for the long term.”

While publicly stepping back, the co-founders still control more than 51% of shares. As of April, Page held 26.1% of Alphabet’s total voting power, Brin 25.25% and Pichai less than 1%.

Pichai, 47, who has spent 15 years at Google, rose to prominence while leading development of Google’s Chrome browser. He later led product development and engineering across all of Google’s services for a year before gaining the CEO title and adding with it oversight of Google’s advertising and cloud computing business.