Google’s Executive Reorg: Does It Matter?

As we and others reported yesterday, Google CEO Larry Page is shuffling the deck with his executive team, with a reassertion of engineering across the board it appears.

Here’s the Google roster of top executives as it still reads on the site:

• Larry Page, CEO
• Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman
• Sergey Brin, Co-Founder
• Nikesh Arora, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer
• Shona L. Brown, Senior Vice President, Business Operations
• David C. Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
• Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research
• Patrick Pichette, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
• Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management

Here’s the new list of the recently promoted and their respective product-centric spheres of operation:

• SVP of Search — Alan Eustace
• SVP of Advertising — Susan Wojcicki
• SVP of Mobile/Android — Andy Rubin
• SVP of YouTube — Salar Kamangar
• SVP of Social — Vic Gundotra
• SVP of Chrome — Sundar Pinchai
• SVP of Local & Commerce — Jeff Huber

It’s not clear how the list immediately above relates to the first one. Of course Jonathan Rosenberg announced he was leaving Google earlier this week, though some have speculated the decision wasn’t entirely voluntary.

The appointment of Jeff Huber as the head of “Local & Commerce” is being received by the snark-inclined as a snub of early Google employee Marissa Mayer, who had been in charge of local apparently until Huber’s appointment. It was pointed out to me that Huber is engineering and Mayer is product.

Huber may ultimately be empowered to make product decisions if Larry Page is trying to more closely meld product and engineering. It’s not clear yet.

Like Rosenberg Mayer no longer needs to work and if she’s upset by the decision she could easily leave and do other things — or nothing at all.

Beyond Mayer no one appears to be talking about Udi Manber, who inherited search after Mayer moved over to local. Alan Eustace now has the SVP of Search title. Presumably Manber would report to him.

It’s hard to know how much stock to put in titles at Google. Day-to-day activities may not change that much notwithstanding the promotions.

The widespread expectation is that there will be additional personnel moves and perhaps some exits as Page consolidates his new team and new Google regime.