With 20 years in the company, executive Ben Gomes, who led Google’s search division, was relocated to the education and learning services sector. With this, the experienced employee will take initiatives such as Google for Education, Google Scholar and Google Arts & Culture. According to the company, solutions became a priority because of the growth of distance learning during the pandemic. The position that was once occupied by Gomes now belongs to Prabhakar Raghavan. Former commander of the Ads and Commerce area, the executive will assume the company’s great products as head of the Search segment. In addition to keeping the research running, the employee with more than eight years of service will have to take care of services like Google Assistant, Google Podcasts and Google News. The head of the ads and commerce division is in the hands of Jerry Dischler, who has been working on Google Ads for more than 10 years. Present at the firm since 2005, the employee is defined by the company as a key player in the sector’s strategies.
New head of engineering
Google also announced that Jen Fitzpatrick, who led Maps and other localization tools, was promoted to head of the company’s engineering sector. With that, the executive will have to command about 8 thousand employees working with infrastructure and privacy solutions. With about 20 years of experience at the company, the former Maps commander has a lot of knowledge about privacy, which should be useful in her new role within the company. “This function offers her the opportunity to further improve our systems and products”, explains CEO Sundar Pichai, in an email sent to the company’s employees. The Maps and geolocation sector will have the leadership divided by Liz Reid and Dane Glasgow.
Transition affected by US protests
Despite the large number of changes, the trend is that the transition of executive functions is not immediate. According to Pichai, the company has put the brakes on changes to support the demonstrations that are taking place in the United States, and consequently are affecting the world. “Considering everything that is happening in the world, I recognize that this is not a good time to make changes to the way we work”, explains the company’s CEO. “Last week, we started launching this ad and then held it out of respect for what our colleagues – especially black Googlers – are dealing with.”
