- Google's head of search Ben Gomes is transitioning to a different role at the company, it was announced today, and will be replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan.
- As part of the shake-up, Jen Fitzpatrick, who heads up Google's maps business, is also taking on a new role overseeing Google's Core and Corp engine teams.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Google's head of search Ben Gomes is moving to a new role at the company, and will be replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan, as per an internal memo seen by Business Insider.
Raghavan was previously overseeing Google's advertising and commerce products. Jen Fitzpatrick, who heads up Google's maps business, is stepping down from her role to oversee the Core and Corp engine teams.
Meanwhile, Jerry Dischler will step up as the new head of ads. Dischler was previously VP of product management for Google AdWords.
The changes were announced in a memo circulated to staff by CEO Sundar Pichai and viewed by Business Insider.
"Ben, after two extraordinary decades building Search from the group up, will move to a new role tying our longstanding efforts for learning - across areas like Education and Arts & Culture - more closely to our flagship products and core user experiences," wrote Pichai in the memo.
Ben Gomes is a Google veteran and ran Google's core search business for most of his time there. In 2018, when then-head of search John Giannandrea stepped down, Gomes was announced as his replacement to lead the entire team.
Pichai's memo opened by acknowledged it was "not a great time to be making changes to how we work," regarding the tense political situation in the US.
"Given everything that's going on in the world, I recognize this is not a great time to be making changes to how we work. "Last week we started to roll out this announcement and held it back out of respect for what our colleagues – most especially Black Googlers – are dealing with. In the source of preparing for these changes, we had to inform a number of people of our plans, and the news naturally began to filter out to more and more people," he wrote.
"It's important to me that Googlers hear about changes affecting their work in the right way, rather than through rumors or news stories. Since we did not think we could successfully hold back the news any longer, I am sharing this with you today."
This story is developing...
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