Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has appointed John L. Hennessy as its executive chairman, the company said Thursday.
Hennessy, a long-time computer scientist who was Stanford University’s tenth president before stepping down in 2016, takes over Alphabet’s (GOOG) board after former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in late December that he would step down as executive chairman.
Schmidt, who was Alphabet’s chairman for 17 years, is still a member of the company’s board, which also includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google’s cloud computing chief Diane Greene, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
“Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition,” Schmidt said in December. “The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving.”
Hennessy has been on Alphabet’s board since April 2004, and has been its lead independent director since April 2007, Google said. In 1984, he co-founded the semiconductor company Mips Computer Systems, which went public in 1989 and was eventually sold to computing company Silicon Graphics in 1992 for a little over $400 million.
Alphabet revealed Hennessy’s new position on Thursday as part of the company’s latest quarterly earnings report.
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Alphabet shares fell 1.25% in after-hours trading to $1,153.10.
