Internet search engine major Google confirmed the stepping down of John Giannandrea as the head of Google’s web-search unit. John Giannandrea will be staying on at Google in a different role. The company did not reveal the details about the new role.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google merged its search and artificial intelligence divisions in February 2016, placing John Giannandrea, a computer scientist, at the top.
Google will be splitting up the two groups again. The internet giant is widely considered the technical leader in both fields, but is facing new threats from rivals like Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. with the advent of voice-based search devices.
Google appointed Ben Gomes, a company veteran and the architect of a series of overhauls this past year to stem misinformation on its platforms, to run search. Jeff Dean, a co-founder of the Google Brain research lab, will lead the AI division.
