Thomas Kurian will replace current CEO Diane Greene. He will join Google Cloud on November 26, and take over the leadership role in early 2019
Indian-American Thomas Kurian, former Oracle President of product development and a respected technologist, was named head of Google’s cloud business on Friday.
He will be replacing Diane Greene, who ran the unit for three years.
Greene wrote in a corporate blog post that Kurian will be joining Google Cloud on November 26, and will take over the leadership role in early 2019. Until then she will be working with Kurian to ensure a smooth transition.
However, she will remain a Director on the board of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
In the blog, Greene shared that she originally planned for a two-year stint when she joined Google in 2015 to run its enterprise business, but ended up working an extra year.
“Now, after an unbelievably stimulating and productive three years, it’s time to turn to the passions I’ve long had around mentoring and education. The mentoring will include investing in and helping female founder CEOs who have engineering or science backgrounds,” she said.
Greene said she, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, interviewed Kurian for the job.
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, under Greene’s leadership, Cloud has become an incredible business built on Google’s decades of investment in infrastructure, data security, and AI.
Thomas Kurian quit Oracle in September
Kurian, who hails from Kerala, stepped down from Oracle in September after working at the company for 22 years. He was President of Product Development at Oracle from 1996 to 2018.
He reportedly quit Oracle over disagreements with Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison over the future course of the company as Cloud business gets highly competitive.
Prior to Oracle, Kurian worked with McKinsey and Company as a consultant serving clients in the software, telecommunications, and financial services industries.
Kurian said he is excited to join the fantastic Google Cloud team at this important and promising time. “I’m looking forward to building on the success of recent years as it enters its next phase of growth,” he asserted.
Welcoming Thomas to Google team, Pichai said, “We’re really excited to welcome Thomas whose product vision, customer focus, and deep expertise will be a huge asset to our growing Cloud business.”
