Eric Schmidt announced Thursday that he would resign as executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet.

Schmidt will remain on Alphabet's board and serve as a technical adviser to the company.

He's been with the company since 2001 and was previously Google's CEO.



Eric Schmidt, who helped oversee Google's rise from a search startup to a global behemoth, is stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet, the search giant's parent company.

The change will be effective as of the company's next regular board meeting, in January, Alphabet said in a statement on Thursday. The company says it expects to replace him with a nonexecutive chairman.

"Larry, Sergey, Sundar, and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition," Schmidt said in the statement. "The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving."

Schmidt will remain on Alphabet's board and take on a new role as a technical adviser to the company. He also plans to spend time on philanthropy and on "science and technology issues," he said in the statement.

Schmidt, who joined Google as its CEO in 2001, became its executive chairman in 2011. He worked with the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to grow Google into the publicly traded superpower it is today.

In 2015, when Google established Alphabet as its corporate parent, Schmidt became executive chairman of the holding company, Page became its CEO, and Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Google.

Google's sister companies under Alphabet include some of its former subsidiaries, such as Nest and X, which researches futuristic technologies.

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