SAN FRANCISCO — Google said Thursday that Larry Page, its co-founder and president of products, would take over as chief executive, succeeding Eric E. Schmidt, the company’s longtime chief.
Mr. Schmidt will remain executive chairman and serve as adviser to Mr. Page and Sergey Brin, the other company co-founder and its president of technology.
The shake-up, which will take effect April 4, is the biggest change in management at the company since Mr. Schmidt joined as chief executive in 2001.
“Larry, Sergey and I have been talking for a long time about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making — and over the holidays we decided now was the right moment to make some changes to the way we are structured,” Mr. Schmidt wrote in a blog post.
On his Twitter account, Mr. Schmidt, who was widely described as “adult supervision” at Google when he was named chief executive, wrote: “Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed.”
Mr. Schmidt said that Mr. Page would “merge Google’s technology and business vision” while allowing him to focus on external issues, like “deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships.”
