Longtime Google Executive Prabhakar Raghavan Named Company’s New Chief Technologist
- The Indian American been in charge of ads and commerce since 2018 and was promoted to the head of Google Search and Assistant in 2020.
Google has named longtime executive Prabhakar Raghavan has the company’s Chief Technologist, CEO Sundar Pichai announced in a blog post last week. Raghavan has been in charge of ads and commerce since 2018 and was promoted to the head of Google Search and Assistant in 2020. He will be replaced by Nick Fox, who was part of his leadership team, and will lead Google’s Search, ads, geo, and commerce divisions, Pichai said. In this role, he’ll partner closely with me and Google leads to provide technical direction and leadership and grow our culture of tech excellence.
“Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in his own career,” Pichai wrote in the post. “In this role, he’ll partner closely with me and Google leads to provide technical direction and leadership and grow our culture of tech excellence.”
CNBC notes that “the move comes as Google continues to restructure its teams to move more quickly in the artificial intelligence arms race, where it faces increased competition.”
According to trade publication Adweek “the shake-up comes at a turbulent time for the company as it deals with multiple antitrust lawsuits concerning its search and ads businesses.” The company’s “search advertising business is expected to dip below a 50% market share in the U.S. next year for the first time in more than a decade,” the publication said, citing dada from research firm eMarketer.
Adweek also pointed out that “AI is top-of-mind at Google, as competition in the space is heating up.” Pichai also announced that “the team working on Google’s Gemini application, which includes its AI direct-to-consumer products, will join AI unit Google DeepMind under Demis Hassabis, that division’s CEO,” Adweek said.
“Prabhakar’s leadership journey at Google has has spanned Research, Workspace, Ads, and K&I [Knowledge and Innovation],” Pichai wrote. He “led the Gmail team in launching Smart Reply and Smart Compose as early examples of using AI to improve products, and took Gmail and Drive past 1 billion users,” Pichai continued. He lauded Prabhakar and his team for achieving “ significant growth and innovation” across K&I, “all while improving core Search functionality.” Pichai gave some examples as well. “Maps and Shopping have transformed with AI-driven features like immersive view and virtual try-on,” he said. “And in Ads, we’ve made real progress with AI-powered ad formats and streamlined campaign management, while continuing to innovate with Performance Max to empower millions of businesses.” He said he’s “grateful to Prabhakar for the strong foundation and leadership bench he’s built across K&I. That includes his incredible senior leaders and Nick who is ready to hit the ground running in his new role as SVP of K&I.”
Before joining Google, Raghavan was a key leader at Yahoo, where he established and managed Yahoo Labs. He also previously worked as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Verity and spent 14 years at IBM, specializing in algorithms, data mining, and machine learning.
Raghavan graduated with a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a distinguished member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Additionally, he has held positions as a consulting professor at Stanford University and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the ACM. In 2009, the University of Bologna awarded him a Laurea honoris causa.