Top Google Exec Calls It Quits Under New Larry Page Regime
The Larry Page regime lost its first big hitter Monday in Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's chief of product development. Rosenberg is reportedly planning to leave the search giant in the coming months due to Page's demand for multi-year commitments to Google from senior executives.
Page, taking over from Eric Schmidt as Google's chief executive, also served as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's first CEO in its early days. Schmidt is now Google's chairman in an executive shakeup that has been months in the making. Sergey Brin remains as a co-founder.
Now Page will have to find a replacement for key senior management figure and Google executive committee member Rosenberg, who told The San Jose Mercury News Monday that he would leave the company this summer but could return in a consulting role.
Rosenberg told the Mercury News that he had long planned to leave Google in 2013 to coincide with his daughter going to college and that he couldn't make the long-term commitment to the company Page has asked of his senior executives.
The 49-year-old Rosenberg, who worked at Apple and other technology companies before landing at Google in 2002, told the newspaper that he planned to co-author a book on Google's management culture with Schmidt.
Google has not named a replacement for Rosenberg, but did release a statement Monday praising the man whom the Mercury News credited with mentoring such Google stars as Salar Kamangar, head of YouTube chief, and advertising chief Susan Wojcicki.
Page, meanwhile, is attempting to rekindle the start-up atmosphere at the search giant by having Google managers directly email him about projects and holding daily work groups with top executives in a public area of the company's campus, according to the Wall Street Journal.
