In a surprise announcement, Google co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO, replacing current CEO Eric Schmidt, as from April 4th 2011 and will assume responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations.
Eric Schmidt will become executive chairman. Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google with Larry Page while they were students at California’s Stanford University, will be in charge of developing new products.
The news came as Google reported fourth quarter profits of $2.54 billion compared with $1.97 billion in the same period in 2009.