Prabhakar Raghavan, who serves as Google’s senior vice president overseeing Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments products, has been appointed as Chief Technologist of the search engine giant, as announced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, October 17.
According to a Moneycontrol report, this shift occurs as Google’s main search business faces heightened competition from rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI, and fresh startups like Perplexity. Shifts in consumer behavior may also play a role in this transition.
“Prabhakar has chosen this moment to make a significant advancement in his career,” Pichai wrote in a message to employees. After 12 years of leading teams at Google, he will go back to his computer science roots and take on the position of Chief Technologist.
Raghavan’s current position will be filled by Nick Fox, a seasoned Google veteran and a member of Raghavan’s leadership team.
This announcement also coincides with a reorganization of Google’s Knowledge and Information (K&I) team. “By integrating the teams, we will improve feedback loops, facilitate faster deployment of our new models in the Gemini app, enhance the efficiency of our post-training efforts, and build on our strong product momentum,” Pichai explained.
Who is Prabhakar Raghavan?
Prabhakar Raghavan, 64, joined Google in 2012 after previously working at Yahoo, where he specialized in search and ad ranking as well as ad marketplace design.
He held the position of Vice President of Google Apps and Google Cloud, overseeing engineering, product management, and user experience. Later, he led the Gmail team, introducing early AI innovations such as Smart Reply and Smart Compose.
During his leadership, Gmail and Drive eventually reached over one billion users.
In 2018, Raghavan was appointed senior vice president of Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments products, succeeding Sridhar Ramaswamy.
Under his direction, several AI features were launched, including AI Overviews, Circle to Search, video understanding, and the “shop what you see” option in Lens.
When Gemini faced criticism for inaccuracies in its portrayal of certain historical figures, Raghavan issued a public apology in a company blog post, explaining the issue and outlining how Google intends to rectify it.