Urs Holzle, Google’s senior vp for technical infrastructure, speaks concerning the Google Cloud Platform throughout a convention on June 25, 2014, in San Francisco.
Stephen Lam | Getty Photographs
Google worker No. 8 Urs Holzle will step again from control after 24 years of main technical groups, CNBC has realized.
Maximum just lately main technical infrastructure for Google Cloud and reporting immediately to CEO Thomas Kurian, Holzle oversaw a company that consisted of greater than 12,000 full-time staff.
Within the transition, Holzle shall be labeled as an “person contributor,” this means that he’ll be running independently and not managing staff.
Holzle has been a pivotal determine inside of Google since its early days. In infrastructure, the corporate has claimed his crew lowered the power utilized by Google information facilities to lower than 50% of the business moderate.
In an electronic mail to staff Tuesday, Holzle stated he’ll focal point on a small choice of technical assignments at a time in addition to advising. A part of that can come with articulating technical AI processes, facilitating discussions and inspiring sooner choice making, his memo mentioned.
His electronic mail went on to mention this is likely one of the maximum attention-grabbing and impactful years in a very long time and that he is been short of to do extra technical paintings.
The transfer comes amid a shakeup inside the corporate’s cloud group, in keeping with an electronic mail from Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian seen via CNBC.
Chris Vonderhaar will lead Cloud Provide Chain and Operations and can go away Amazon Internet Products and services after 13 years on the corporate, the place his most up-to-date position used to be vp of AWS Knowledge Middle Neighborhood. Ben Treynor Sloss, vp of engineering at Google Cloud, will start reporting immediately to Kurian. Kurian famous a few different shifts.
Kurian’s word stated making technical selections extra temporarily is extra necessary than ever.
Google didn’t straight away reply to requests for remark.
Google faces drive to proceed rising cloud earnings after the unit reported its first successful quarter in April. The corporate additionally faces pageant from Amazon and Microsoft in each cloud choices and synthetic intelligence.
In a separate reorganization amongst Google’s synthetic intelligence and analysis groups in April, Jeff Dean, who lengthy ran Google’s AI efforts, additionally turned into labeled as an “person contributor” and given a brand new name as “leader scientist.”
The transfer additionally comes as Google requires restricting faraway paintings because it tries to get staff to go back to bodily workplaces. Holzle sparked inner controversy in 2021 after pronouncing he’d transfer to New Zealand whilst the corporate began asking staff to return again to the place of business, leading to employees complaining the corporate had a double-standard for higher-ups.
In fresh all-hands conferences, extra corporate executives have made bodily appearances.