Sundar Pichai named CEO at Google parent Alphabet after founders step down

In his statement, Pichai made it clear that the transition will not affect the Alphabet structure or the work they do day to day

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have announced that they are stepping down from the leadership role of the parent company Alphabet. Google CEO Indian-American Sundar Pichai (47), will be assuming the role of Alphabet CEO, making him one of the most powerful corporate leaders of the world.

Considered as a significant shakeup in the Silicon Valley company, an announcement in this regard was made by Page and Brin in a letter to the company employees, which also included a statement from Pichai. With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and ‘Other Bets’ operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure, wrote the two Google co-founders.

“We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company,” they said. “And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar Pichai will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. He will be the executive responsible and accountable for leading Google, and managing Alphabet’s investment in our portfolio of Other Bets,” said Page and Brin.

“We are deeply committed to Google and Alphabet for the long term, and will remain actively involved as Board members, shareholders and co-founders. In addition, we plan to continue talking with Sundar regularly, especially on topics we’re passionate about!” they wrote. In his statement, Pichai made it clear that the transition will not affect the Alphabet structure or the work they do day to day. “I will continue to be very focused on Google and the deep work we’re doing to push the boundaries of computing and build a more helpful Google for everyone,” he wrote….

Google Plus is shutting down after massive data exposure of 500K accounts

The domestic unit on Monday slumped 30 paise to finish at a fresh lifetime low of 74.06 amid strengthening of the greenback and steady capital outflows.

Tech giant Google is shutting down its social networking site Google Plus after a technical glitch was found to have compromised accounts and personal information of over 500,000 of its users.(Technology News)

The announcement in this regard was made by Ben Smith, Google Fellow and vice-president of engineering, in a blog post Monday, in which he noted that the Indian-American headed company could not confirm which users were impacted by the bug.

“However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API,” he said.

“We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any profile data was misused,” Smith said.

The technical bug was detected as part of an effort called Project Strobe started by Google early this year. It is a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google accounts and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access, he wrote.

————>>> Business Standard OR  BS <<<————