Search giant Google is making some big changes to its leadership team just as the company released data revealing that it saw a substantial boost in paid clicks during the final quarter of 2010.
Google has announced that co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO on April 4th, replacing Eric Schmidt. Schmidt, who served as chief executive since 2001, will now transition into the role of executive chairman. The shake-up is designed to simplify Google’s management structure while streamlining important decision making.
Page has served as president of products at Google and, along with Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin, formed a triumvirate handling all daily management decisions at the company for the past decade. As CEO, Page will oversee day-to-day operations while Brin will take the lead on strategic development of new products.
In his new role as executive chairman, Schmidt will primarily focus on building and cultivating Google’s business relationships, as well as governmental outreach.
Of course, after looking at the data Google rolled out this week on how the company closed out 2010 you might wonder why they’re making any changes to the leadership team in the first place.
Paid clicks were up 18 percent during Q4 2010 according to Google and the average cost per click also increased by 5 percent from the year before. Overall revenue for the fourth quarter was $8.44 billion, a nearly 27 percent increase from the $6.6 billion during Q4 2009, while the company’s net income was $2.54 billion.
“Q4 marked a terrific end to a stellar year,” said Schmidt. “Our strong performance has been driven by a rapidly growing digital economy, continuous product innovation that benefits both users and advertisers, and by the extraordinary momentum of our newer businesses, such as display and mobile.”
Stellar indeed!
Google’s total revenue for last year was reported at a staggering $29.32 billion, up 24 percent from $23.65 billion in 2009. Net income for 2010 also jumped, from $6.52 billion to $8.51 billion, a 30 percent increase.
With numbers like that, it doesn’t seem like much really needs to be changed over at Google. The company continues to grow at an impressive rate and is widening its scope seemingly by the day. But it will still be interesting to see what tactically changes with the new leadership hierarchy.
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